
QassJB-LUjlQ. 



1 



ly 



,-^ 



THE SUPEKNATURAL 



THE SUPEENATUEAL 



IN RELATION TO THE NATURAL. 



BYAuVi REV. 

JAMES'^M'COSH, LL.D. 

AUTHOR OF " THE METHOD OF THE DIVINE GOVERNMENT, 
" INTUITIONS OF THE MIND," ETC. 




NEW YORK: 
ROBERT CARl^ER & BROTHERS, 

No, 281 BEOADWAY. 

1862. 






BELFAST: ALEX. MAYNE, PRINTEI 



I \ 



PEEFACE. 

The author of this Treatise all along intended 
that his Work on ^^ The Method of the Divine 
Government Physical and Moral" should be fol- 
lowed by another on ^' The Method of the Divine 
Government Supernatural and Spiritual." This 
Essay may be regarded as Part First of that con- 
templated work. Whether it will be succeeded 
by a Second Part, bearing more especially on the 
Spiritual Economy of God in our world, depends on 
so many circumstances at the disposal of a Higher 
Power, that he thinks it wiser to make no promise 
to the public on the subject. The questions agi- 
tated in our day have called on him, in the mean 
time, to give to the world the First or Apologetic 
Part of the intended publication. His deepest 
feeling, in now issuing it from the press, is a regret 



VI 

that it is not more worthy of the all-important 
theme discussed. 

In this world of ours the work of destruction is 
easier than that of reconstruction. A few reckless 
men may, in a few hours^ break or consume as 
much valuable property as would require many 
sober men, many years of toil, to repair or restore. 
"When the authors of '^Essays and Keviews " 
began to scatter inflammable materials, the first 
efforts of the defenders of the citadel attacked 
were naturally directed towards ascertaining 
the precise aims of the combatants, and stay- 
ing the immediate effects on the minds of the 
nation. I suppose, however, that the public 
feel that we have had enough of disquisitions 
as to the position of the Essayists, and as to the 
tendency and probable effect of their writings. 
There is also a very general feeling that we must 
now have something beyond those excellent little 
articles and essays, which have been written with 
the view of counteracting the general influence of 
the doubts that have been insinuated in regard to 



Vll 

the Word of God^ and the attacks that have been 
made on the fundamental principles of religion. 
The expectation now is, that there must he a 
laborious discussion of all and of each of the 
questions started, and this on their absolute 
merits, with a view it may be to existing contro- 
versies, but on grounds and by principles not 
peculiar to this or to any age. 

It has often been remarked, that in a com- 
mon-place subject it is easier to advance an 
acute objection than to offer a telling reply. A 
man may acquire a reputation for ingenuity more 
readily by proving that a stone is not a stone, 
than by a laboured demonstration that it is a 
stone. Nevertheless, the friends of religion, na- 
tural and revealed, must engage patiently in the 
work of defending what has been attacked. It 
may be all true that the objections have been 
offered before ; it may also be true that they 
have been answered before ; still, as long as the 
attacks continue, and there is a race of young 
men springing up who are exposed to them, those 



Vlll 

set for the defence of the fortress must meet them^ 
and this at the very points at which the assaults 
are made. This is what is expected, in the present 
day; of the defenders of religion. This is what they 
owe to truth ; this is what they owe to the God of 
truth. It is thus that what seemed an evil may, 
by God's blessing, be turned to good. 

We have seen a company of boys at the top of 
a steep hill setting a number of stones rolling, 
without seriously contemplating whither they 
might go, and what injury they might do 
among those sitting, or lounging, or working 
below. The writers of the ^^ Essays and Ke- 
views" have been acting very much like these 
youths. Seated on their academic heights, they 
did intend to let loose a set of active agencies 
which might move and startle the Church and the 
world ; but I am convinced that some of them did 
not calmly weigh the destructive effects that might 
be produced on those beneath, as these rolling 
stones came rushing in among them. I believe 
that the issue, chronological and logical, of the 



\ 



IX 

views propounded, on those wlio fall thoroughly 
under their influence^ must be a denial or at least 
a doubt, of any supernatural power having been in 
operation, at the creation of the world or since, 
either in the production of man or in order to 
his redemption. Whatever Mr. Temple or Mr. 
Jowett may have meant, we may see — unless it 
be counteracted — the proper result of the whole 
movement in once living faiths groaning, bleed- 
ing, and dying in that stony, arid, and horrid 
plain which Mr. Baden ^Powell has provided in 
his exclusive naturalism, in his mechanical law, 
and physical causation. 

The profound Leibnitz, in writing to Arnauld, 
intimates his fear that the ^4ast of heresies may 
be, I do not say Atheism, but Naturalism publicly 
professed." Had the fisherman, Peter, a prophetic 
glimpse opened to him of the same state of things 
when he speaks of scoffers who shall come in the 
last days, saying — -^^ Since the fathers fell asleep 
all things continue as they were from the begin- 
ning of creation " ? 

h ./ 



The questions started by the '^ Essays and 
Eeviews " relate to the reality and possibility of 
supernatural operation ; to the historical evidence 
substantiating Christianity ; to the inspiration of 
God's Word ; and to the topics involved in these 
directly or collaterally. We must now have these 
subjects discussed; either in one great v^ork issu- 
ing from the depths of a comprehensive mind, or, 
what may serve as good a purpose, in a number 
of treatises written by different men, each taking 
up the theme which he feels himself competent to 
treat. In this little work only one of the ques- 
tions raised has been taken up. The special aim 
of the author is to disentangle the confusion 
which has crept into the discussion of one great 
problem, and to throw what light he can on the 
Natural and Supernatural, and the relation in 
which they stand one to the other, to man and 
to God. 



V 



CONTENTS. 



BOOK EIEST. 

THE NATURAL IN RELATION TO THE SUPER- 
NATURAL. 

CHAPTER I. 

PA&B 

Man Discovering the Uniformity op Nature, . . 1 

CHAPTER II. 
In What the Natural System Consists, . , . . 26 

CHAPTER III. 

Mental Principles involved in our Conviction as to 

the Unipormity op Nature, ,, .. .. 36 

CHAPTER IV. 

How MUCH IS Contained in the Natural, .. .. 45 

CHAPTER Y. 
The Natural a Manifestation op the Supernatural, . , 82 



BOOK SECOND. 

THE SUPERNATURAL IN RELATION TO THE 
NATURAL. 

CHAPTER I. 

General Remare:s ON THE Supernatural, .. .. 101 

Sect. I. The Precise Nature of the Supernatural, . . 101 

Sect. II. The Possibility of a Miracle, .. .. 118 

Sect. III. Purposes served by the Supei'natural, . . 133 

Sect. IV. Relation of the Supernatural to the Natural, .. 150 



Xll 



CHAPTER II. 

The System in the Supernatural. 

PACK 

Sect. I. There is System in the Supernatural, . . 166 

Sect, II. The Typical System of Revelation, . . 178 

Sect. III. The System of Prophecy, .. ... 204 

Sect. IV. The Plan of Christ's Life, . . . . 228 

Sect. V. The System of Miracles, . . . . 237 

Sect. VI. The System of Doctrine, . . . . 256 

Sect. VII. The System of Duty, .. .. .. 267 

Sect. VIII. The System of Means. . . . . 271 

Sect. IX. The System in the Dispensation of Grace, . . 274 

CHAPTER III. 

The Evidences of Christianity. 

Sect. I. A Study of the Christian Evidences. The Evi- 
dences a System, . . , . . . 282 

Sect. II. Connexion between the Miracle and the Doc- 
trine, .. .. .. .. 308 

Sect. III. Ends accomplished by the Systematic Charac- 
ter of Revelation, . . . . . . 316 

CHAPTER IV. 

Analogy between the Natural and Supernatural 

Systems, .. .. .. .. ..■ 340 



APPENDIX. 

Art. I. Oxford Philosophy, 

Art. II. Bunsen and German Theology^ 



353 
363 



BOOK FIEST. 



THE NATURAL IN RELATION TO THE SUPER- 
NATURAL. 



CHAPTER I. 

MAN DISCOYERma THE UNIFOEMITY OF NATURE. 

It is a most vivid and intensely interesting pic- 
ture which is presented to us by Humboldt in the 
second volume of the Cosmos, where he unfolds 
the ideas which mankind have formed, in succes- 
sive ages, of the magnitude of nature, and of the 
manner in which their views of earth, ocean, and 
sky, of plant, animal, and man, became enlarged, 
as voyagers and travellers explored new countries, 
and as science extended its observations and cal- 
culations, and combined them into general laws. 
It would be quite as interesting, and fully as in- 
structive, to have a like panoramic view of the 
conceptions which men have been led to enter- 
tain, at various times and in various countries, 
of the nature and extent of uniformity and of 
law in creation, and of the enlargement of their 



MAN DISCOVERING 



apprehensions and beliefs, as observation and 
science pushed on their researches, and widened 
the sphere of their discoveries. In now endea- 
vouring to furnish this, I am not to attempt such 
a glowing historical painting as Humboldt has 
set before us; I must content myself with a 
simple sketch in plain water-colours. 

Let us try to put ourselves in the position of a 
shepherd, a hunter, or a tiller of the ground in 
the early ages of the world, or of an uneducated 
man in countries beyond or in states of society 
beneath the reach of civilization, as he looks out 
on the phenomena of nature. Two deep impres- 
sions, I think, w^ould be left on the mind of such 
an one ; — one, that there is uniformity, and the 
other, that there is irregularity in nature. 

The uniformity presses itself everywhere on his 
notice. He sees it in day following night, and 
night succeeding day, in the sun pursuing his 
steady course in the heavens, and in the seasons 
appearing in due order ; he discovers it in food 
nourishing and sleep refreshing him, in the 
growth of the grass and the trees, of his lambs 
and his cattle. But in the very midst of these 
regularities there are occurrences which come 
after a different fashion. The sun rises and sets 
with undeviating constancy, but the eclipse ap- 
pears very inconstantly and the lightning flashes 
very unexpectedly. The seasons accomplish their 



TEE UNIFORMITY OF NATURE. 6 

beneficent rotation without a failure; but storms 
arise and rains descend (in most climates) in 
perplexing and puzzling uncertainty. His bodily 
frame performs its functions, and his grain 
and fruit-trees, his flocks and herds, spring up 
and grow according to a very obvious course, 
which he can, to a large extent, anticipate; but 
blight or disease may come upon them at most 
unexpected and troublesome times, to disappoint 
his plans and blast his prospects. 

If our observer be a godly man, that is, with 
a heart inclined towards God, he will discover 
and acknowledge the presence of a Divine Being 
in each of these classes of objects. But, on the 
other hand, if he be disposed to live without God, 
and to keep Him at a distance, he may find a 
convenient means of accounting for both without 
calling in a living and acting being, employing 
physical agents to accomplish beneficent and 
moral ends. To explain what seems settled and 
constant he may give a power and a being to 
Nature, constituting it into a self-working ma- 
chine, while he refers the irregularities and inter- 
ferences to Chance, not that he ever thinks of 
defining Chance ; but he means that the events 
come without any purpose of a designing mind. 

But, meanwhile, man has deep religious ten- 
dencies and impulses, which will break out de- 
spite his unbelief and in the very midst of his 



^ MAN DISCOVERIFG 

ungodliness. Circumstances arise and feelings 
are awakened, ^Yhich constrain him to look out 
for, or to believe he discovers, a Being above these 
mundane agents. But the whole history of man 
shows that while he has deep religious instincts, 
they do not usually work in a healthy manner. 
Too frequently they are in a dormant state, and 
they are called forth only by what rouses the 
mind into excitement, into a state of hope or a 
state of fear. The consequence is that God comes 
to be seen in certain of His works, and not in 
others; — in those w^hich move and alarm, not in 
those which come daily and steadily; in the 
drought or tempest which blights the crops, not 
in the heat and moisture which make them to 
spring up and grow and ripen ; in the disease 
which wastes and ravages, not in the health which 
has sustained and gladdened the frame for years ; 
in the lightning which smites, but not in the 
light which smiles ; in the eclipse with its lurid 
darkness, but not in the pleasant sunshine daily 
playing on our earth ; in the meteor which bursts 
out so ominously, but not in the stars which look 
down upon us so purely and benignly ; in sudden 
and unexpected prosperity, but not in the com- 
mon blessings which are showered upon us from 
day to day ; in the storm which sinks the vessel, 
but not in the favourable breezes which 'have 
borne it along for such a length of time ; in the 



TEE UNIFORMITY OF NATURE. 

preservation of the individual in a shipwreck, but 
not in that assiduous care which to so many 
has prevented shipwreck altogether. This is 
superstition, which, in its narrowness and par- 
tiahty, discerns the God who is in all nature, only 
in certain portions of it. When unrestrained by 
foreign influences it soon issues in polytheism, 
or the belief in " gods many and lords many," 
each supposed to be engaged somehow^ or other 
in interfering with what has been settled, and in 
producing those irregularities which spring up 
in the midst of the uniformities, to control or to 
disturb them. 

It is a perception of the uniformity of nature 
which forms the most effective natural means of 
making mankind keep hold of the unity of God. 
Those who have lost, or who have never reached, 
the idea that there is a connection between the 
various physical agencies in the world, are sure 
to look upon them as being directed or interfered 
with by a number of conspiring 'or conflicting 
supra-mundane beings, each with a purpose of 
his own ; and I believe the great body of man- 
kind can be kept from this error only by a direct 
revelation from heaven of the character of God. 
Even those who have a written word will ever 
be tempted, like the Jews in old times, to run 
after the worship of a multitude of gods, or like 
rude unlettered Christians in modern times, to 



6 MAN DISCOVERING 

make a subordinate class of preternatural beings, 
such as saints or witches, act an important part 
in those cross events for good or for evil, which in- 
terpose to help or to hinder the more direct and 
settled tendencies of natuje. 

But the same spirit of ungodliness which 
allures so many to an adulterous attachment to 
a multiplicity of gods, who suit their contracted 
views and corrupt taste, may take another form 
am.ong those who have been kept from polythe- 
ism by a comprehensive conception of nature ; 
or, by what is more common in the ages when 
persons begin to reflect and philosophize, by a 
vehement inchnation towards abstract thinking, 
which, as in the case of the Eleatic school of 
early Greece, perceives, but exaggerates and mis- 
interprets, the unity which exists amidst the 
variety of physical agents. The deep natural aver- 
sion to a pure and personal God, who sees the 
hearts and judges the deeds of man, tempts this 
latter class into pantheism, of a ruder or more 
refined character ; and they look on nature per- 
sonified as being God, and the sun, moon, and 
stars, or the animals in whom the principle of life is 
most active, or the more powerful physical agents, 
such as light and fire, as being themselves the 
acting deities. In many Eastern countries the 
two forms of error coalesce and exist side by side ; 
the pantheism being the form adopted by the 



TEE UNIFORMITY OF NATURE. * 

sages who mount up into high abstractions, and 
the polytheism furnishing the channels in which 
the religious feelings of the people expend them- 
selves. These two, the nature pantheism and the 
nature polytheism, have a great many more points 
of affinity and bonds of communion than we 
might at first suppose. The philosophic pan- 
theist is quite willing to allow the rabble to be 
polytheists, since they can rise no higher in 
their conceptions ; he will let them freely indulge 
in the worship of the sun, and moon, and ani- 
mals, and elements, and will himself fall in, 
without compunction, with their worship, looking 
upon the individual natural objects, or the sym- 
bols of them in the temples, merely as represen- 
tatives of the Whole ; and with this accommoda- 
tion the polytheist is entirely satisfied, which he 
would certaiDly never be with the uncompromis- 
ing position of stern distance held towards him 
by the pure theist. The two, indeed, often meet 
in the same individual; the pantheist, finding 
that his abstractions are cold and unattractive, 
has to lavish his pent-up feelings on beings who 
can hear and respond to the breathings or beat- 
ings of his heart; while the polytheist, in his 
times of deeper thought and sentiment, or of 
more terrible emergency, feeling as if all inferior 
and divided powers were failing him, casts himself 
on the One Supreme and Omnipotent Ood. 



8 MAN BISCOVERING 

Taking mankind as a whole, a far greater 
number fall into superstition than into panthe- 
ism. The victim of s.uperstition, we have seen, 
feels his dependence on God only in regard to 
supposed interferences with the settled course of 
things. The Egyptians told Herodotus that, as 
their fields were regularly irrigated by the waters 
of the Nile, they were less dependent on God 
than the Greeks, whose lands were watered by 
rains, and who must perish if Jupiter did not 
send them showers.* Persons trained in these 
narrow views are apt to be very much offended 
when philosophers argue that all things are go- 
verned by laws, or when men of science shew 
them natural powers, where they believed there 
was only a Divine agent. They feel as if one 
part of God's works after another were being 
wrested from Him by presumptuous and impious 
men, who would, in the end, leave him no place 
at which he can interfere, or at which we may 
discern his agency. Hence the conflicts between 
science and religion, or rather between science 
and persons resolved to stand up for God, but 
who have adopted the doctrine that they must 
cease to recognise Divine action as soon as they 
find physical agency. As one field of nature 
after another is taken from God and given over to 
mundane operation^ some grieve, others rejoice, 

* Herodotus, II. 13. 



TEE UNIFOEMITY OF NATURE. ^ 

while a third class are exasperated into bitterness 
and fanaticism. Some feel their whole soul per- 
plexed, and their heart failing them, as they find 
the gods driven from the woods and the streams, 
from the mountains and the stars, and allowed 
to interfere neither with health nor disease. Not 
a few, as they discover that the Divinity can no 
longer be found in what they have been taught to 
recognize as his place of abode and special sphere 
of action, are greatly tempted to abandon them- 
selves to utter unbelief, — it is as if they had 
entered into the inner shrine of their temple, 
where they were told that God dwelt, and found it 
all emptiness — it is as if a Jew had been brought, 
by unexpected circumstances, or by a rash deed 
of profanity, into the holiest of all, and found 
there no ark of the covenant, no Divine presence. 
Others feel and express their joy, as they have 
been delivered from all fear of a God to judge 
and to punish ; and they often break out into 
scoffing and profanity. As to the great mass of 
vulgar minds, they at once rush into an unwise 
and violent contest with the advocates of natural 
agency; they denounce them as ungodly, and at 
times expose them to a virulent persecution. 
These throes are the Nemesis which ever pursues 
error (as well as crime), till thinking minds are 
led to undertake the task of readjusting the rela- 
tions of physical and Divine agency. 



1 MAN DISCO r BRING 

When nations are first brought into view by 
their historic records, we find them looking on 
certain objects and certain departments of nature 
as settled and fixed, while others are regarded as 
irregular, or at least disconnected the one with 
the other ; the former being ascribed to the gods 
or to nature, the latter to the gods or fortuity, 
according as persons are piously or profanely dis- 
posed. It is in this state that we find Greece, 
when its earliest writings enable us to understand 
the views and thoughts of the people. The hills,* 
the fields, the seasons, the ordinary life of the 
plant, of the animal, and of man, are objects 
about which little curiosity is excited, and little 
inquiry is made ; they seem all ruled and deter- 
mined, or they run their undeviating course 
without requiring any external aid to help them 
on. It is different with objects within the reach 
of man's view, but beyond his minute inspection, 
and with events which come with variations, or 
which appear at unforeseen times or with tremen- 
dous energy. As observation extended, and 
science co-ordinated the facts gathered, the por- 
tion of the universe seen to be regulated by law 
of some sort, became larger in itself, and in com- 
parison with the seeming irregularities and ano- 
malies. It was seen, from the time when observa- 
tion began, that the sun has in himself some power 
of shining, and that his course is a regular one ; 



TEE UNIFORMITY OF NATURE. 



11 



but certain superstitions were interfered wi th when 
the Babylonian star-gazers could predict the 
exact time of the occurrence of the eclipses of the 
moon. Those who were taught to consider the 
heavenly bodies as divine, could not look with 
much favour on Anaximander of Miletus, when he 
instituted calculations as to the sizes and distances 
of some of the heavenly bodies ; or upon another 
Ionian physiologist, Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, 
when he speculated as to the causes of the moon's 
light and the eclipses of the sun and moon, and 
maintained that the moon, like the earth, had 
plains, mountains, valleys, and dwellings, evi- 
dently for intelligent beings. A revolution was 
about to be effected in men's ideas of the world 
when Aristotle'^ elaborately demonstrated that 
the earth must be spherical. 

Anaxagoras, it is well known, represented rea- 
son as the first or deepest principle in the sys- 
tem of the universe, and maintained thai by it 
all things were caused and set in order. When 
some one read this to Socrates he was highly 
delighted, and thought he had now discovered a 
sufficient explanation of what came under his 
notice in the world. But having got the books 
of the Ionian physiologist, he was astonished to 
find that after making reason arrange all things, 
Anaxagoras makes no farther reference to it, but 

* De Coelo, 11. 14. 



1 3 31 AN DISCO r BRING 

calls in " air, ether, and water, and many other 
things equally out of place."* From the few 
isolated references to the doctrines of Anaxagoras 
handed down to us from ancient times, we can- 
not ascertain how he reconciled his two state- 
ments, of all things being caused and disposed by 
intelligence, and of the physical elements being 
the agents employed in the production of natural 
occurrences. But the criticism of Socrates, and 
we may add, the like criticism in the next age by 
Aristotle,! shew that neither of these philoso- 
phers had attained clear ideas of the compati- 
bility of all things being caused and arranged by 
Divine reason, and yet of the economy of the world 
being carried on under God by physical agents. 
Socrates may be taken as the type of the reljgious 
philosopher of ancient Greece or Rome, bent upon 
seeing God and the gods (for in his creed there is a 
somewhat incongruous mixture of pure theism 
and polytheism) in all nature and in a well- 
ordered providence. Aristotle may be taken as 
the representative of the mere metaphysical and 
physical speculators of the same era, acknow- 
ledging a God or gods, and perceiving an order 
and a system, but not discovering or explaining 
how God is using all physical agencies for the 
accomplishment of his purposes. Neither of 
these profound thinkers seems to have risen to 

* Phaedo of Plato, 105—108. f Metaph. I. iv. 4. 



TEE UNIFOBMITY OF NATURE. 13 

the idea of a God acting everywhere in nature, 
by natural agency, according to natural law. 
Meanwhile, the great body of the people divided 
what we call nature into two parts, one of which 
they ascribed to the system of things, or to chance, 
and the other of which they ascribed to their gods, 
and they were jealous to an intense and vehe- 
ment degree of all those philosophic speculators 
or physical inquirers, who maintained or who 
hinted that what they had reserved for these divi- 
nities could be accounted for by natural causes. 
I believe that the heart of many an earnest and 
thinking youth was wrung with agony, and 
could find no sympathizing one to whom to 
express it, as he struggled between the super- 
stition in W'hich he had been trained, and the 
natural discoveries which were being opened to 
him ; as he strove to retain both, and found them 
to be incompatible ; or as he abandoned the faith 
of his youth to give himself up to a cold and 
comfortless scepticism. It is painful and hum- 
bling to read the record of such conflicts, in 
which a steadily advancing science has ever been 
victorious, while its opponents have been obliged 
to give up one untenable defence after another. 
But it is not, after all, without its valuable les- 
sons, for it shews that the defender of religion is 
betraying the cause committed to him, when he 
allows directly, or by implication, that God is not 



14 



MAN DISCOVERING 



to be seen in what is brought about by those 
wise and beneficent laws wdiich he himself hath 
instituted. 

It can be proven that some of the ancients had 
grand glimpses of the unity of nature, evidently 
suggested by the correlations which were ever cast- 
ing up among things, which at first sight seemed 
so unlike and disconnected. These were gene- 
ralized far too hastily into doctrines not autho- 
rised by the facts, but some of them, notwithstand- 
ing, have turned out to be curious anticipations, 
and, as it w^ere, presages of modern discoveries. 
The Pythagoreans traced regulated numbers and 
forms through every object in the heavens and 
earth: it should be added, that they did so in a 
very mystical and unscientific manner. Plato 
delighted to recognize earthly things as being 
after the patterns of eternal wisdom ; and as he 
often failed to discover the Divine model, he 
ascribed the failure to the incapacity of matter to 
receive the Divine idea. The views of these gifted 
men, though large and expanded, were shadowy 
and uncertain ; they were the presentiments of 
genius looking to a few obvious facts, and not 
the results of a careful induction, and they were 
mixed up with innumerable errors. Of all the 
ancient sects, the Stoics, as we might expect 
from their methodical mode of procedure in 
everything, contrived to draw out the most com- 



THE UNIFORMITY OF NATURE. 



]5 



plete plan of the system of the world. Biit their 
scheme was entirely theoretical, and was built on 
no induction of facts, and modern science has 
completely set it aside. By help of a passive 
principle which is matter, and an active principle 
which is God, and the four elements, fire, mois- 
ture, air, and earth, they constituted the world, 
in which the presiding principle is fire, identified 
by them with God ; which world has undergone, 
and shall undergo, an infinite series of cycles, 
each closing as it had begun with a conflagra- 
tion, in which all things are absorbed into the 
elemental, the intellectual, the Divine fire, out of 
which, as the heat subsides, there come, first the 
gods and the heavenly bodies, and then the earth 
with the objects on it, each new cycle exhibiting 
the same scenes as had gone before, so that in 
the next period (as in the present) there shall be 
a corresponding Socrates who shall marry a cor- 
responding Xantippe, and be accused by a cor- 
responding Anytos and Melitos." 

It is only in modern times that the doctrine of 
the unity and system of nature has been esta- 
blished on a basis of facts. It is interesting to 
observe the stages by which the human mind 
has proceeded in its progress. First, Copernicus 
promulgates the great revolutionary truth that 

* Orig., Contra. CeU. IV. Seneca, Quaes. Natur. III. 29. M. Aur., 
Med. VII. 19. Plut. Contrad. Stoic, &c. 



1 6 MAN DISCO r BRING 

the sun, as the larger body, must be the centre 
of the system, and that our earth goes round him 
as a dependency — an idea which had been thrown 
out in a mystic way by certain Pythagoreans at a 
time when the world was not prepared to receive 
it, but is now taken by the modern world as a 
fertile seed into its bosom. A change from the 
earth to the sun as the centre of the system would 
not produce so great an effect on the physical 
world, as that produced in man's ideas when he 
felt that he had a new and larger centre, and was 
in close relationship with a v/ider universe. The 
mechanical discoveries of Galileo removed deep- 
rooted prejudices, by shewing what was the law 
according to which bodies tend to the earth. 
But the greatest impulse was given to the popular 
feeling, when the recently invented magnifying 
glasses were directed by Galileo towards the sky, 
and shewed that the planet Jupiter has its satel- 
lites, even as the earth has its moon. The new 
world discovered by Columbus was, in a higher 
sense, a new world to man's intelligence, it added 
more to man's ideas than it added to his wealth 
or his possessions. The very common people 
could no longer look on the earth as a lump of 
stone and clay, with a flat but variegated surface, 
covered so far with water, when seamen returned 
to tell how they had actually circumnavigated our 
globe. Order was introduced into the wandering 



TEE TTNIFOBMITY OF NATURE. 17 

movements of the planets, when Kepler proved 
that Mars pursues an elliptic path, and thus gave 
us, by consequence, the very orbit in which our 
earth runs in space. When Newton demonstrated 
that the moon is held in her sphere by the same 
power as draws a stone to the ground, men 
now rose in their conceptions to a law which 
embraces and binds the whole material world. 
Henceforth, even in the common apprehension, 
those spots of light which dot the sky at night 
became enlarged into worlds, possibly the suns and 
centres of other worlds each as large as our earth. 
The researches which followed the discovery of 
Newton shewed that gravitation operates far as 
observation, aided by the telescope, can reach ; and 
the calculations of the great continental mathe- 
maticians demonstrated that the variations in the 
movements of the bodies of the solar system are 
periodical, and that there is a self- regulating 
arrangement pervading the whole. 

Another class of investigators have been 
strengthening and widening our conceptions by 
inquiries into the more latent forces which work 
on earth, and which seem also to be active all 
throughout the mundane sphere, such as light, 
and heat, and chemical action, and electricity, 
and galvanism, and magnetism. It cannot be 
said that as yet we khow the essential nature of 
any of these forces, but we have discovered 

B 



18 



MAN DISCOVERING 



enough about them to be quite certain that they 
operate universally, and operate according to fixed 
laws. Those who looked on thunder as in a 
special sense the voice of God, and on the light- 
ning as the minister of his vengeance, must have 
had their feelings somewhat shocked by the dis- 
covery of Franklin that thunder is the noise made 
by natural forces, quite of the same character as 
those which act everywhere in bodies on the 
earth's surface, and that the lightning is so far 
under the control of man that it can be drawn 
from the heavens by a kite. The doctrine of the 
correlation of the physical forces, more than even 
that of universal gravitation, connects every part 
of nature with every other, in a thorough 
unity of action. Sir Humphrey Davy corre- 
lated the chemical and electric forces. Oersted 
correlated magnetism and electricity. Faraday 
has magnetised a ray of light, and illumi- 
nated a stream of magnetism. Late discoveries 
correlate all the physical forces, including heat 
and light, and mechanical powers, and demon- 
strate that they are related even to the vital forces. 
By an appropriate arrangement, any one physical 
force can be got from any other; and the amount 
of any one which can be derived from a given 
amount of another is definite, and admits of de- 
finite expression. As light is one of these forces, 
and as it is by light that the stars are revealed to 



TEE TJNIFOBMITT OF NATVRE. 1 9 

US, we are thus made to discover that there is a 
unity or connection offerees, running through the 
whole knowahle creation, to the most distant star 
which the farthest seeing telescope has disclosed. 
Such discoveries are turnings at which we see 
new aspects of old and familiar objects; openings 
through which we get views of far distant scenes; 
elevations from which we descry the directions, 
the bearings, and the connections of tracts of the 
universe which were before regarded as divided, 
separated, and isolated. 

Researches into the organic portions of nature 
have furnished equally beautiful illustrations of 
the order, and the unity of order, in creation. 
The observations of naturalists, the dissections 
of anatomists, the classifications of botanists and 
zoologists, shew that in every country, every plant 
and every animal, and every organ of every plant 
and every animal, is after a type or model, and 
that there is a mutual affinity and a harmony 
among organized beings, from the lowest lichen 
up to the highest quadruped, and to man himself. 
It has been shewn that the whole skeleton of the 
vertebrate animal is made up of a series of seg- 
ments, which, with an infinite number of variations, 
are yet homotypal ; that is, of the same general 
form. It has been shewn that all the parts of 
the flower of the plant, sepals, petals, stamens, 
and pistils are after the model of the leaf, and 



20 MAN DISCOVERING 

it can be shewn that there is a homotypal corre- 
spondence between the leaf with its ^^eins or ribs, 
and the branch with its branchlets, and the whole 
tree with its ramifications. These discoveries 
make the animal and the plant a unity through- 
out. 

Geology, the younger, does for time, what astro- 
nomy, the elder sister, had previously done for 
space ; shewing that law reigns through all know- 
able ages, as the other had proven that it rules 
through all knowable places. It shews us the 
very same agencies working from the remotest 
ages ; tracts of country widely separated from 
each other, raised or depressed by like causes ; 
and corresponding or homoeophyte plants and 
animals appearing on regions or ages far re- 
moved from one another. There are disputes 
as to whether there have not been supernatural 
exercises of Divine power in the creation of new 
species or orders of plants and animals ; and all 
believers in the Word of God, and most of those 
who have studied the psychological nature of the 
human soul, maintain that there must have been 
a special creative act when man appeared on the 
scene, but all acknowledge that physical causes 
operated on our earth, millions of ages ago, as 
they now do, and that on the plants or animals 
coming upon the stage, they are of the same fun- 
damental types as those now on our globe, and 



THE UNIFORMITY OF NATURE. 2 I 

that they Hved, and propagated their kind, and 
died, as they do in our epoch. 

These are the views entertained by all edu- 
cated men in our day, and for the professed 
defender of religion to set himself in opposition 
to tliem, would only be to injure the cause which 
he is seeking to benefit. It is quite as possible 
for those who adopt and cherish these concep- 
tions to be religious, as for those who have more 
contracted ideas and convictions as to natural 
law. It may be all true that they have difficul- 
ties and temptations to contend against; but 
these will be found to have their seat and their 
strength in the ungodliness of the heai;t, which 
is much the same in all ages ; and though they 
may have taken a somewhat different form in 
this epoch of advanced physical knowledge, I 
doubt much whether they are greater and more 
formidable than those which have beset thinking 
minds in all times. It is surely possible for those 
who see natural law everywhere, to discover at 
the same time the present action of God. We 
should so train and discipline our minds, that 
we see God acting in all action, and living in 
all life. I believe we are now in more favour- 
able circumstances than the heathen ever were, 
for seeing the Creator in all creation. In per- 
fect conformity with all that science has dis- 
covered, we may look on the sun, moon, and 



22 



MAN DISCOVERING 



stars as the symbols of his majesty; we may 
still hear his voice in the thunder and see his 
terrible power in the lightning. The gods have 
disappeared ; but it is as ghosts flee before a 
brighter light, which discloses the one God in 
all his greatness, and higher beauties in him 
and in his works. God may still be regarded 
as compelling the clouds and hurling the thun- 
derbolt, with this only difference, that we also 
look upon him as making the sun to shine, and 
spanning out the bow of heaven, and preserving 
us in health in the midst of a thousand dangers. 
We can dispense with Neptune ruling the 
waves and Aeolus the winds, when we have one 
great God taking care of all, and making them 
work in harmony. We no longer need Phoebus 
and his chariot and his coursers to convey the 
sun ; we have a better provision for his fulfilling 
his course, in the laws and arrangements of the 
mundane system. It may have been a tem- 
porary disappointment to some, but should have 
been a permanent joy to all, when the Naiads 
were driven from the rivers, — on the banks 
of which we are encouraged to seek, and may 
actually find, communion with the one living 
and loving God. The Caffre, after becoming 
a Christian, may still see God as the rain- 
sender, only he will now understand and believe 
that he does not send rain capriciously, but 



TEE TfNIFOEMITY OF NATURE. 



23 



according to an ordained plan, and that the 
same God sends all other blessings as well, to 
call forth our gratitude in one full and swelling 
tide. The Hindoo may at first be pained when 
the microscope shews him that he is devouring 
living creatures in the food he eats and the 
water he drinks ; but when he rises to more 
enlightened and expanded views, he will be glad 
and grateful to think that God has filled all 
nature, air and earth, woods and waters, with 
beings living and enjoying life, and as they do so, 
testifying of the goodness of Him who hath given 
them all their enjoyments : and in regard to his 
magnificent river, while no longer permitted to 
honour it as a god, or allowed to cast his aged 
mother into its waters, he will rejoice to look 
upon it as it flows along so majestically, and dis- 
penses blessings on either bank, as a grand sym- 
bol of the power and the majesty of God. By 
the progress of science, the stars are driven into 
more distant regions of space, and creation into 
more remote ages of time ; but then we look on 
the stars as worlds, and as centres of worlds, 
which can be numbered only by Him who made 
them, and, by moving back the beginning, we 
leave in front a larger space for the varied 
evolutions of Divine wisdom, with its infinite 
resources. Irregularities and anomalies decrease 
and at last disappear, but it is only that wonders 



24 MAN DISCOVERING 

may multiply and ever become more wondrous. 
Chaos is driven out of sight, and chance has no 
longer a place in which it can work ; and all, that 
law may universally reign, with a living, an 
all-wise, and all-gracious God, as its giver and 
guardian. He who discovers God as acting in 
natural law may see God in the law as well as 
in the action, and may admire not only the 
power of the acts, but the wisdom of their mode 
of action. 

After all, the views entertained by pious and 
reflecting minds in the simpler, and again in the 
more advanced ages or stages of the world, do 
not differ so widely as we might at first imagine. 
In primitive times, the observing man sees sys- 
tem, and he sees seeming irregularities ; and the 
religious man ascribes both to God. In the 
scientific ages, the devout man observes the same 
two classes of phenomena ; — he perceives mecha- 
nical law, and the regular successions and cycles 
of events ; but he discovers also that ttiere is an 
adaptation of one agent to another, and of one 
law to another, whereby God can secure the most 
minute providential occurrences, at times in uni- 
son with, at times in contradiction to, the more 
direct operation of the uniformities of nature. 
He discovers the difference of those two, as the 
early thinker did, with this difference, that he 
observes, what the uneducated man did not, 



TEE TTNIFOEMITY OF NATURE. 25 

that both are within the natural and ordained 
system of God ; but with this far more important 
point of agreement, that he recognizes m both, 
as the primitive behever also did, the operation 
of God, fulfilling his purposes of unfathomable 
wisdom. 

We must return to this subject. 



26 



IN WHAT TEE NATURAL 



CHAPTER II. 

IN WHAT THE NATUEAL SYSTEM CONSISTS. 

It is clear tliat nature is a system, that is, a 
regulated structure. Let us endeavour to find 
out the elements of which it is composed. So 
far as man can rise to a reasonable opinion on 
so vast and complicated a subject, they seem to 
consist of a number of substances, with their 
powers or qualities, of a distribution of them in 
space, and with time for tliem to act in. These 
substances have a power of acting according to 
their properties ; and being placed in a certain 
relation to each other, they begin to act; motions, 
changes, and new distributions follow. Thus, as 
things are so constituted that matter attracts mat- 
ter, certain bodies are drawn towards each other, 
while others are driven farther away, by reason 
of the more powerful attraction of one or more of 
them towards a larger body. Again, certain sub- 
stances combine chemically by their mutual 
affinity, while others are decomposed in conser 
quence of the tendency of one of the elements to 
combine with an adjacent substance. This actual 



SYSTEM CONSISTS. 27 

structure of the system is determined by the 
number of the substances, by the nature of their 
quahties, by the mutual relation of their rule of 
action, and by the arrangement and collocation 
of the objects. The present state of the universe 
is the issue of these agents, dispositions, and 
actions, all of which are ascribed by the pious 
man to God. 

What the ordinary observer sees, what we all 
see prima facie in nature, is not the ultimate 
elements or original structure, but a derivative 
order, the result of arrangement and operation. 
The skeleton of the body is hid from our 
view by a filling up, a covering, and clothing — 
far more grateful to us in their rounded 
forms and surface colouring ; and we can dis- 
cdver the bones and ribs, the moving and vital 
organs, only by an inspection below the surface, 
by a sharp and penetrating dissection. Thus, by 
a very simple observation, we can discern the 
alternation of day and night and the revolu- 
tion of the seasons ; but these flow from the 
motions and mutual adaptations of the earth and 
heavenly bodies, which were not found out 
till astronomy had made considerable progress 
through long ages of patient observation. It is 
easy to discover the general order according to 
which grain springs and animals grow, but to 
determine the precise mechanical, chemical, 



28 IN WHAT THE NATURAL 

electric, and vital properties according to which 
the organism germinates and is matured, has 
been found by science to be a vastly more diffi- 
cult undertaking. Science must ever commence 
with the observation of phenomena, that is, of 
individual facts as they appear, and it would rise 
to the laws of phenomena, which it does by 
generalizing the appearances that present them- 
selves. It would thence strive after the discovery 
of the elementary objects in nature, and of their 
original forces or properties. It may be doubted 
whether even" the most advanced science has 
succeeded in reaching this knowledge in any one 
department of nature. It cannot be proven that 
we have discovered the original constitution of 
any one body, — that even oxygen and hydrogen 
are certainly indecomposable elements. It is dis- 
puted whether the law of chemical equivalents 
is an original law of elective affinity, or results, 
as Dalton thought, from the size and form of the 
primary atoms. Some maintain that even gravi- 
tation is not an ultimate law of matter, and that 
it may possibly be generated by some other and 
wider and simpler force. The discovery of the 
primary nature, qualities, and constitution of sub- 
stances may be, or quite as possibly may not be, 
within the grasp of human investigation. Still, 
it is the polestar which the scientific navigator 
never reaches, but which he sets before him, to 



SYSTEM CONSISTS. 29 

guide him in the direction he would take among 
these moving elements which he would make to 
fulfil his purposes. 

We are ever hearing, in these times, of the 
order of nature, and of the uniformities of nature, 
and of the laws of nature. The Rev. Baden 
Powell, in particular, is ever referring in all his 
works to the " principle of order," to the " grand 
principles of law," to " law pervading nature," to 
the " chain of universal causation," to the " in- 
variable universal system of physical order and 
law." But no where has he entered upon a 
searching analysis, or given an exact statement 
of what is involved in these very wide, but not 
very definite expressions ; and the consequence 
is, that he is ever making rash and unwarranted 
assertions as to the nature and extent of phy- 
sical law. If we would understand precisely what 
the natural system is, we must look carefully into 
its structure. It will be found to comprehend 
the following parts : — 

] . Every substance in nature is endowed with 
certain properties, original or derived. Thus, the 
soul is possessed of powers of consciousness, of 
sense-perception, and feeling. Bodies continue 
in the state in which they happen to be, whether 
this be motion or rest, unless they be influenced 
by powers ah extra ; all bodies attract each other 
inversely according to the square of the distance ; 



30 IN WHAT THE NATURAL 

the elements combine according to definite pro- 
portions ; light is propagated by vibrations ; ac- 
tion is equal and opposite to reaction ; in polar 
forces, like repels like, and attracts unlike ; — 
these are samples of properties which may be 
simple or may be complex, but are, at all events, 
natural properties. These properties consist 
essentially in tendencies — not in acts, but tenden- 
cies to act, on the needful conditions being sup- 
plied. Thus, oxygen has the tendency to com- 
bine with hydrogen, and does combine with it, 
when the hydrogen is presented in the proper 
mode. Thus, it is the tendency of fire to burn 
when fuel is presented, and the tendency of a dead 
animal body to decay. It will be shewn, as we 
advance, that this tendency is never, properly 
speaking, interfered with in any of the miracles 
of Scripture. But our present aim is simply to 
bring out what is in the cosmical system. 

2. The substances and their properties are 
correlated and distributed so as to produce a 
general and an obvious order. It will be shewn in 
a succeeding Chapter, that they are so adjusted 
as also to produce individual events, having an 
important bearing upon human character and 
human destiny. But our present concern is 
more especially with the order and uniformity of 
nature. These are effected by the arrangement 
of the substances with these properties, so as to 



SYSTEM CONSISTS. 31 

produce here a contemporaneous order, and there 
a regular succession of phenomena which can be 
observed for scientific and for practical purposes. 
Of this description are the apparent motions of the 
sun, moon, and stars in the heavens, the seasons 
for sowing and planting, for reaping and gather- 
ing in fruit, the stages in the life of the plant, 
and a hundred other periodical laws which human 
beings can observe more or less easily, by science 
or without science, and to which they can accom- 
modate themselves, and, as they do so, secure 
the blessings which nature has provided. All 
this order arises from arrangements among the 
substances with their powers. With other dis- 
tributions and collocations of natural agents there 
might be no general laws, or the general laws 
would be different. The actually existing laws 
are admirably adapted to the constitution of 
man; — to his intellectual powers, which delight 
to discover class and cause, and the relations of 
means and end, and also to his practical con- 
venience, as enabling him to anticipate the future 
from his experience of the past. It is very conceiv- 
able that these laws may be in themselves an end 
contemplated by God, and pleasing to him as he 
surveys them. It is certain that they are a means 
towards a farther end, a means of making crea- 
tion intelligible to the intelligent creature, and 
capable of being used for practical pui3)oses. 



32 



IN WHAT THE NATURAL 



Miracles, we shall see, are, in a sense, an inter- 
ference with these laws. They fulfil their end, 
they draw the attention of spectators, they 
become "wonders" and " signs," and they attest 
a supernatural revelation, because they do not 
fall in with natural laws. But supernatural 
occurrences may (it will be shewn that in fact 
they do) take the form of order or system, and 
thus fall in thoroughly with an analogy which 
binds the natural and supernatural, as the two 
compartments of one great system, which God 
has constructed for the accomplishment of his 
ends of awful wisdom and bright beneficence. 

3. There is a large yet limited body of objects 
and powers, constituting nature and performing 
its functions. I believe that the substances, 
with their properties, have all been created by 
God, and also that all their natural relations and 
dispositions have been instituted by him. No 
human power, no natural power, can add a new 
substance to nature, or destroy any existing sub- 
stance, — ^we may burn the hay or stubble, but 
it is not thereby annihilated, one portion has 
gone up into the air as smoke, another has gone 
down to the earth as ashes. Not only so, it 
seems to be established by the latest science, 
that power cannot be created or lost, and that 
the sum of force in the world cannot be increased 
or diminished, by natural means. We may trans- 



SYSTEM CONSISTS. 33 

form one natural force into another, or make one 
natural force produce another ; but in all the 
mutual action of bodies, the sum of the potential 
and actual energies is never altered. Not only is 
it beyond created power to create or annihilate 
new bodies or substances, it is beyond all natural 
power to create or annihilate force. Nature is a 
self- comprised system, globe, or sphere ; in se 
ipso totus, teres, atqiie rotundus. 

In saying so, it is not meant to assert that this 
sphere has no points of contact or relationship 
with other compartments of creation, and still 
less, that it has no dependence on a higher and 
a supernatural power. All that we maintain is, 
that it has a number of agencies Avhich, in their 
totality, combination, and action, constitute the 
system of nature. A miracle, we shall see, does 
imply the interposition of a power beyond this 
mundane sphere. It serves its end, because it 
is the effect of a supernatural cause. 

But, meanwhile, let us understand precisely 
what is meant when it is said, that nature is a 
self-contained system. Let us not suppose that 
it has been proven that it needs nothing to sup- 
port it, and that it will go on for ever if left to 
itself. The geologist, in his diggings, has gone a 
little beneath the surface, but has not reached 
the bottom in his explorations ; he has gone back 
many ages, but has not reached the beginning, 





34 m WHAT TEE NATURAL 

which ever retreats hefore him. The astronomer 
has penetrated to great distances, but he has not 
reached the outside, — he is just impressed the 
more with the vast circumambient region into 
which his telescope cannot penetrate. Science, in 
all its explorings, knows not when the beginning 
was, nor when the end shall be; knows not where 
the centre is, nor where the circumference is, — if 
indeed there be a circumference. This knowable 
world, however large and complete, is not, after 
all, the universe, but only a part of it ; whether 
we follow it behind or before, above or beneath, 
on the right side or the left, it is seen to be broken 
off; beginning we know not when, ending we 
know not where, but certainly not when and- 
where our vision fails ; it looks hung from above, 
and resting below, on nothing discoverable by 
physical science. There is clear evidence that 
things have not always been as they now are : 
there was a time, for example, when man was 
not on the earth ; an earlier time, when there 
were no animals on the globe. There is no evi- 
dence that there are physical agencies in the 
world which would keep it existing for ever. 
The continental mathematicians of last century 
thought they had gone a step beyond Sir Isaac 
Newton, and demonstrated that, according to 
laws now in existence, the machine would go on 
through all eternity, without requiring to be 



SYSTEM CONSISTS. 



35 



wound up, or receiving any aid from without. 
All that they proved was, that there is a beautiful 
self-adjusting or self- regulating arrangement in 
the solar system, which secures that the obvious 
variations of the motions of the planetary bodies 
are periodical. Later inquiry has shewn, that 
there are agencies now operating which must, in 
the end, dissipate the whole existing order of 
things ; and the most advanced science has dis- 
covered no natural means of counteracting the 
destructive tendency. The following are the 
conclusions drawn by Professor W. Thomson : — 
" 1. There is at present, in the material world, a 
universal tendency to the dissipation of mecha- 
nical energy. 2. Any restoration of mechanical 
energy, without more than equivalent dissipation, 
is impossible in inanimate material processes, 
and is probably never effected by means of orga- 
nized matter, either endowed with vegetable life, 
or subjected to the will of an animated creature. 
3. Within a finite period of time past, the earth 
must have been, and within a finite period of 
time to come, the earth must again be, unfit for 
the habitation of man as at present constituted, 
unless operations have been, or are to be, per- 
formed which are impossible under the laws to 
which the known operations going on at present 
in the material world are subject."* 

* Transactions of the Koyal Society of Edinburgh, 1852. 



36 2IENTAL FRINCIFLES INVOLVED 



CHAPTER III. 

MENTAL PEINCIPLES INVOLVED IN OUE CONVICTION 
AS TO THE UNIFOEMITY OF NATUEE. 

OuE belief in the uniformity of nature is, I am 
persuaded, the result of a large and long ex- 
perience. It does not seem to be guaranteed by 
any native or necessary principle. There are, as 
I think, very clear tests by which supposed in- 
tuitive convictions of the mind may be tried. 
Intuitive or necessary truths are all self-evident ; 
they are seen to be true on the bare inspection 
or contemplation of the objects. They are also 
necessary ; that is, they carry with them an 
irresistible conviction that they are true and must 
be true. They are, farther, catholic or universal ; 
that is, they are entertained by all men, on their 
minds being fairly directed to the obj ects. But our 
conviction as to the unity or uniformity of nature 
cannot stand these tests. It is not a self-evident 
truth ; men cannot, on the bare contemplation of 
the notions or terms, and apart from a course of 
experience and the gathering of facts, declare 
that law reigns over all objects in nature. It is 



IN OUR CONVICTION. 



37 



not necessary, it is certainly not universal ; for^ 
in fact, the unscientific and the unlettered, who 
constitute the great bulk of mankind, are igno- 
rant of it, and a vast number, were some one to 
propound the doctrine to them, would declare 
that it cannot be true, for that they see constant 
interpositions of supra-mundane agencies. The 
conviction is entertained steadily, and in regard 
to the whole of nature, by those only who have 
had the advantage of a scientific culture, by 
which, or by the literature in connection with it, 
they have been put in possession of the results 
of a very wide induction of facts. 

Still I am inclined to think that there are 
native and original principles of the mind which 
incline us to look for, though they do not compel 
us, apart from experience, to believe in, law and 
uniformity in nature.* 

1. There is an intuition which leads us to 
look on every object falling under our notice 
as having Being, something constituting it what 
it is, abiding in it, and going with it wher- 
ever it goes, so that we are sure that if we 
meet with that object again it will have this 
being or essential nature, which must ever con- 



* T cannot, in this treatise, give a general exposition of the intuitive 
convictions which I here call in to explain our inclination to seek out 
for uniformity, and so I must refer to my work on the " Intuitions 
of the Mind." 



3 8 MENTA L FRINGIPLES IN VOL VED 

tinue with it, unless destroyed by something 
ah extra. This intuition, commonly unobserved, 
enters into all our knowledge of objects, and 
makes us feel that we are surrounded, not with 
ideas, images, or spectres, but with solid and 
abiding realities. It is to be carefully noted, 
however, that this intuition does not vouch for 
the uniformity of nature. We have an intuition 
which says that every object must retain its 
being, unless changed by an external cause, but 
we have no intuitive means of knowing, as to any 
given object, whether it is the same as we met 
with before. We have to determine this by ap- 
pearances, and by experiential rules of evidence. 
But, in forming our judgment, .we may be mis- 
taken, and, in fact, are often mistaken. The child 
frequently looks on a stranger, seen at some dis- 
tance, as its father or mother ; and all our lives 
we may be tempted to find identity where there 
is only similarity. The intuition of being, or 
identity, is, however, one means, not exactly of 
leading us to a conviction of the uniformity of na- 
ture, but of inducing us to look for the sameness 
of objects surrounding us. 

2. There is an intuition as to substance and 
quality. This joins on to the one we have just 
been looking at, but goes'beyond it. We regard 
every substance as exercising a quality, and every 
quality as implying a substance. We are thus 



IJ^ our. CONVICTION. 



39 



led, when we perceive an object, to anticipate that 
it will have some kind of action, and we are thus 
carried up in our investigation from the properties 
exercised to the things that exercise them. All 
this does not prove that there is ever the same 
group of objects in nature,, but it prompts us to 
observe the action of objects, and the uniformity 
of action of objects, falhng under our notice, and 
to trace all action up to substances. 

3. There is the intuition which leads us, when 
we discover an effecPTo look for a cause. This 
intuition connects itself with the other two ; but 
it rises to farther truth. On seeing a change, we 
are sure that there has been an agent effecting 
it. Tiiis is the most active and potent of all 
mental principles in impelling us to the scrutiny 
of nature. We are not satisfied with the im- 
mediate present, we are sure that it has proceeded 
from the past ; and we go back from the nearer 
to the more remote past, and we are not contented 
till we reach an all-sufficient cause which is not 
itself an effect. But this principle, while it ever 
prompts us to seek for the causes of the effects 
which come under our notice, and thus leads us 
to discover the causal connexions in nature, does 
not insist that all things proceed according to an 
eternal chain of physical or of mundane causa- 
tion. The conviction does, indeed, demand a 
cause for every occurrence, but would be quite 



40 MENTAL PEINCIPLES INVOLVED 

satisfied though some or all the causes were 
supernatural. 

4. There is another native (not necessary) in- 
clination of the intellect which has its influence 
in making us seek for, and in the end discover, 
the uniformity of nature, — it is the tendency to 
perceive resemblances. We love to detect like- 
nesses of every kind, and by means of them to 
bring the multifarious objects around us into 
classes, into species, genera and orders, with due 
ordination and subordination. I do not look 
upon this intellectual impulse of the mind as 
being of the nature of a principle of reason, or 
an intuition guaranteeing necessary truth. It 
is merely a native talent, taste, and disposition, 
tending ever to act, and in doing so, to seek out 
its appropriate objects, that is, resemblances and 
affinities of every kind, and thus connect all 
nature by analogies, and bring all its objects 
into groups. All this does not prove that 
nature is uniform, it simply prompts us to seek 
out for the uniformities that exist. It is only 
on actually observing the analogies of nature, 
that we know them to exist; and the internal 
inclination does not guarantee their existence 
beyond the objects that have been actually ex- 
amined. This same mental principle, on the 
discovery being made of supernatural operations, 
will delight to trace analogies between the 



IN OUR CONVICTION. 



41 



natural and supernatural, and between one part 
of the supernatural and another, — and we shall 
discover that there is abundant field here thrown 
open for the exercise of the faculty. 

These, or such as these — blended, in the quick- 
ness of mental action, as colours are on a rapidly 
circulating body — seem to me to be the mental 
principles which lead us to seek for a uniformity 
in nature. They constitute that instinct to which 
Thomas Keid, Dugald Stewart, and others of the 
Scottish metaphysicians so often refer, and which 
they seem to look upon as a simple principle, un- 
resolvable into any other elements, whereas I 
regard it as the combination or issue of seve- 
ral mental intuitions, each inclining the mind in 
the same direction. It is to be specially noted, 
that no one of these mental principles of itself 
authorizes a conviction of the uniformity of 
nature, nor do they together sanction any such 
wide conclusion as that nature has nothing but 
physical or mundane law. Nor is any one of 
them, nor are the whole of them, inconsistent 
with a miracle. We may regard every object as 
having permanent being, without having any in- 
formation or belief as to how many objects are 
operating around us, or as to whether they are 
within or beyond the domains of nature. We 
believe that substances will act, according to their 
properties, on the needful conditions being sup- 



4'2 



MENTAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED 



plied ; but this law of mind says nothing as to 
what substances are at work, or as to whether 
they are all within the circle of mundane agencies, 
or whether some of them may not be from a region 
beyond. Every effect has a cause; but for'any- 
thing the intuition says to the contrary, the causes 
of the effects visible to us might be found quite 
as readily in Divine as in creative agencies. Our 
faculty of comparison prompts to the discovery 
of likenesses, but it is observation that finds out 
what are the actual analogies in the Cosmos. 
All that these intellectual propensities do is to 
instigate us to seek out for the permanence, the 
activity, the causal connexions, and the affinities 
that exist in the objects pressing themselves on 
our notice. As we follow them, and observe the 
phenomena, we arrive at the reasonable conviction 
that there is a imiversal system of natural law. 
But this is the product not of intuition but of a 
lengthened observation, to which, indeed, our 
intellectual promptings have incited us, while it 
is experience which furnishes the true ground on 
which the belief rests. The same experience 
which authorizes the conviction must determine 
the extent of it, and the limits to it. As it is by 
the evidence of facts that we reach the wide 
general maxim, that there is uniformity through- 
out nature, so we may "also, by the same evidence 
of facts, reach the conviction that there is a super- 



IN OUR CONVICTION. 



43 



natural power operating in the midst of the 
natural system. It will be found, indeed, that the 
very same intuitions which instigate us to notice 
the stability and the correlations of nature, also 
allure and proraptr— indeed compel — us to go on 
to a belief in a supernatural power and activity. 
Our intuition as to being is not satisfied with 
dependent being ; it feels that it has not got a 
deep enough foundation till it rests on indepen- 
dent being. Our intuition as to substance will 
go down till it reaches self-existing substance. 
Our intuition as to cause insists on going back- 
to the Being to whom emphatically all power 
belongeth; and when an occurrence is discovered 
in this mundane sphere, beyond the capacity of 
natural agents, it demands a supernatural power. 
Our inclination towards analogies does instigate 
us to admire the wondrous affinities of nature ; 
but it will be quite as interested in looking into 
the analogies between the natural and spiritual, — 

" And what if earth. 
Be hut the shadow of heaven, and things therein 
Each to other like, more than on earth is thought ?" 

The above statement brings out, I believe, 
what our consciousness reveals of our actual 
mental operations ; and it accounts, on the one 
hand, for that inductive propensity which ever 
incites minds of higher intellectual calibre to 



44 MENTAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED. 

seek for the uniformities of nature, while it is 
quite consistent with the fact, that the great 
body of mankind have ever been prone to seek 
for supernatural interpositions amid natural 
occurrences; and it certainly shews that it is 
vain to appeal to any native principle of the 
mind as authorizing the rash assertion that a 
miracle is an impossibility.* 

* Eeid says, " God hath implanted in human minds an original prin- 
ciple, by which we believe and expect the continuance of the course of 
nature, and the continuance of those connections which we have 
observed in time past." And again, " Antecedently to all reasoning, 
we have, by our constitution, an anticipation that there is a fixed and 
steady course of nature." — Works (Ham. Ed.) pp. 198, 199. He allows 
that this expectation " leads us often into mistakes," p. 199. D. 
Stewart represents our " expectation of the continuance of the laws 
of nature " as " an original law of human belief," and seeks to explain 
by it " our conviction of the permanent and independent existence of 
matter." — Phil. Essays {Works, vol. v.) pp. 104 — 106. I greatly doubt 
whether the child or savage has any expectation or belief about a 
"steady course of nature" or "laws of nature." It has merely ^cer- 
tain tendencies which make it look out for constancy and law, whether 
in nature or beyond it. 



HOW MUCH IS CONTAINED IN THE NATUEAL. 45 



CHAPTER IV. 

HOW MUCH IS CONTAINED IN THE NATURAL. 

In the present day tliere is a constant reference 
to nature or natural law. But those who make 
the most frequent appeals to it generally take a 
very limited view after all, meaning by it merely 
mechanical, or, at the utmost, physical law, — thus 
contemplating only one of its many mansions. 
Let us comprehend and thoroughly realise the 
extent of the natural. 

I. Let us observe the extent of the Physical. 

1. The natural undoubtedly includes Order. 
It is the aspect of it most frequently dwelt upon 
in these times. In particular, it was the feature 
habitually and exclusively viewed by Mr. B. 
Powell, who seems^ in the end, almost to have 
identified order with God; thus he speaks of the 
" great principle of physical order, and its conse- 
quences, as the indication of, or rather as sy- 
nonymous with, reason and mind in the natural 
world." ''' By all means let us labour to discover 
the order in the physical world ; and, as we do so, 

* Order of Natm-e, p. 242. 



46 HOW MUCH IS CONTAINED 

let us devoutly look upon it as the expression of 
intelligence. But the order of nature, least of all 
the " physical order," is not synonymous with 
" reason and mind," it is merely an indication 
of them; and the ''reason" always resides in 
another sphere,— it resides in " mind," — that is, 
in the Divine Mind. Mr. Powell is ever re|)resent- 
ing order as the proof, and the sole proof in the 
world, of intelhgence. But, amid all his dog- 
matical assertions, and wearisome repetition of 
assertion, we look in vain for the ground or 
principle on which he argues intehigence from 
physical order, and we are left in ignorance as 
to whether he proceeds upon intuition or experi- 
ence, on a mental law or an external observational 
law, or on what else. I am inclined to look on 
order as the evidence of intelligence, because it 
is an evidepce of design, and that it is an evi- 
dence of design, because the result of arrange- 
ment contemplating a wise and beneficent end. 
Certain it is that the order of nature is the issue 
of an assortment among very numerous and 
diversified materials and agencies. What a vast 
variety, within the Cosmos, of separate sub- 
stances, animate and inanimate, material and 
mental, each with its distinct powers and rules 
of action. The order of nature is due to no one 
of these taken by itself. Take the forces which 
may seem the most strictly and numerically 



IN THE NATURAL. 4.7 

regulated — take the law of gravitation and the 
law of the chemical affinities of bodies — they are 
only single elements of the order which reigns 
in the compartments in which they are found. 
The law of gravitation might draw all bodies to 
one great centre, and bring all motion to a dead 
halt, were there not an adjustment of centrifugal 
and centripetal forces. Chemical attractions, 
among bodies incongruously huddled, might give 
play only to a war of jarring elements, or settle 
into lumpish compounds standing in our way as 
an incumbrance. Order in the solar system, 
order in the earth, order in the structure of the 
inorganic materials in our world, order in the 
stems and flowers of plants, order in the organs 
and movements of animals, are all the result 
of arrangements made by a power without and 
above the material forces. Just as the figures in 
damask or in the carpet are made to come out 
from threads skilfully predisposed and then in- 
tertwined, so do the beautiful forms of plants and 
anim.als — the elegant conical forms, for example, 
of pines and their fruit — the lovely shapes and 
colours of the corolla of flowers — the fine propor- 
tions and graceful movements of man and woman 
— all proceed from a skilful adjustment among 
rude materials. It is because order is the result 
of arrangement that I am inclined to regard it 
as an evidence of intelliixence. 



4:8 HOW MUCH IS CONTAINED 

2, This order, as it results from means ap- 
pointed by God, so it is also a Mean toivards an 
End contemplated by God. In saying so, I do 
not mean to say that this order may not be in 
itself an end. It may be, that just because it 
is order it is grateful to the high wisdom of Him 
who delights in all his works. It may be, that it 
is also pleasing to the contemplative mind of 
angelic beings, as they look down upon its pro- 
portions and harmonies from their heights above 
us. But whatever else it may be, it is also a 
mean towards ends of very high importance. 
In saying so, I do not refer to relations which it 
may have to other and unseen worlds. It is 
clear that it is the order in our earth which 
constitutes it a compartment of the wide Cosmos 
known to us ; and it may be, that it is the order 
in our Cosmos which makes it fit into a yet 
larger system of which ours is but a part. All 
this may or may not be, — we must so speak 
because the theme lies in a region beyond the 
clouds which ever bound our vision. But there 
is an end served by the order in our world of 
which we can speak with confidence ; for it 
comes every where, and alluringly, and pres- 
singiy, under our view. The order has certainly 
and obviously a special respect to man. His 
intelligence is so constructed that he has plea- 
sure in contemplating it, and is ever impelled to 



IN THE NATURAL. 49 

seek out for it, and be experiences a high delight 
in tracing the elements in the compounds, in 
grouping the individuals into classes, and in 
detecting the causal links by which the present 
hangs on the past, and has dependencies in the 
future. Not only so, it is because there are estab- 
lished order and law in the Cosmos, that man can 
accommodate himself practically to the position 
in which he is placed, take steps to draw in the 
good and avert the evil, and exercise an in- 
fluence on coming events. It is because there 
are day and night in orderly succession that he 
knows how to plan his periods of rest and 
labour ; it is because there is a regular succes- 
sion of seasons that he knows when to sow his 
crops ; it is because seed bears fruit after its 
kind that he knows what sort of crop to sow; 
it is because the laws of chemical composition 
and decoQiposition are invariable that he con- 
tinues to partake of food in the confidence that 
it will nourish him ; it is because there are laws 
of political economy that the statesman can add 
to a nation's wealth ; it is because there are laws 
of mind and character that the wise and strong 
man can sway for good or evil the opinions and 
morals of the men of his own age, and transmit 
his influence to the generations that follow. 

3. In nature there is Beauty as well as mecha- 
nical and physical law. I by no means maintain 

D 



50 HOW MVCH IS CONTAINED 

tliat the phrase beautiful, can be applied appro- 
priately to every object in our world. A state of 
things in which everything was positively lovely, 
would, in the first instance, be too exciting, and, 
in the end, would pall upon the taste, by being 
too luscious and luxurious. I believe that every 
object in the Cosmos is useful, it is suited to its 
place, and it has a good end to serve ; but it 
would be extravagance to affirm, that every sur- 
face of clay or cloud has aesthetic qualities. It 
is out of the midst of the more ordinary and 
commonplace scenes that certain objects rise — 
as plants do from the soil of the earth, as damp 
vapours are lit up by the setting sun, as moun- 
tains lift up their heads from the plains^ — to 
melt and soften us by their loveliness of form 
or colour, to kindle our -mind and our eye by 
their sharp and vivid outline, or to awe us by 
their huge bulk, or dizzying height, or irresis- 
tible power. Persons busied with the more 
sordid solicitudes of life have little time, except 
perhaps in a quiet evening after the toils of the 
day are over, to spend on the admiration of 
beauty; and, in fact, they have little rejish for it 
except in its more obvious forms — as in the 
flowing stream, in the grassy slope, the fertile 
plain, the glowing evening sky, or the face and 
person of young man and maiden ; but as mental 
cultivatioa advances, and accumulated wealth 



IN TRE NATTTRAL. 51 

leaves leisure for quiet observation and reflec- 
tion, the taste becomes more and more intense, 
and takes in a much greater sweep of things, 
and it is found that there are objects in nature 
to gratify it, — in sky and cloud, in mountain and 
valley, in tree and flower, in animal hfe lower 
and higher, in man and in woman; and that 
there are persons moved to produce objects of 
art for the farther gratification and elevation of 
it, — in music, in statues, in paintings, and, above 
all, in poems, which come nearest to the full 
symphonies of nature without us, and the capacity 
of the taste within. It w^ould be for the benefit 
of the exclusive observers of mechanical law to 
contemplate this feature of the well-ordered 
Cosmos, were it only to raise them to something 
higher — as music and poetry are often made the 
stimulus wherewithal to raise men to noble 
thoughts and sentiments. They should observe 
that these very mechanical powers are often 
turned by God and man to the production of 
works of art, which lift us far above natural law 
into a region bordering on the moral and spiritual, 
to the existence of which they testify, and to 
which they are meant to be fit ministers. 

4. There is in nature a Fitting of every one 
object and power to every other. I am convinced 
,that there is a prior propriety in the very original 
constitution of the objects themselves, and of the 



52 sow MTJGK IS CONTAINED 

powers or properties with which they are endowed. 
I argue this on two grounds. One is, that, so 
far as we are able to penetrate into the ultimate 
constitution of the powers of nature, we dis- 
cover — as in gravitation and chemical affinities, 
and the dispositions of the organs of plants — nu- 
merical relations and proportions with a very 
profound meaning. The other is, that order is 
seen to be the result of their operation in actual 
nature, and it is not easy to see how such har- 
monies should result from the union of ma- 
terials in themselves altogether discordant. But 
whether there be or be not method in the ori- 
ginal structure of the substances in nature, 
whether the harmony has proceeded from con- 
cords or from discords, it is quite certain that it 
has proceeded from an arrangement of some kind 
— for even melodies, without assortment, will not 
produce harmonies by their conjunction; and 
so we are constrained to recognise superlative 
wisdom in the accommodation of every object 
to every other, of every group of objects to 
every other, of every system of groups to every 
other, and of the whole to every part, and of 
every part to the whole. The actual order of 
nature is the result, we have seen, of these con- 
formities, and so must also be the beauty which 
consists in colour and form, in proportion and 
harmony. From these same arrangements pro- 



IN TEE NATURAL. 53 

ceed other beneficent characteristics which we 
are now to consider. 

5. In nature there is Final Cause, having 
respect to the comfort of the lower animals and 
of man. In the plant, the simple material ele- 
ments — the oxygen, hydrogen, carbon and nitro- 
gen — are made to correspond with one another ; 
and the external stimuli of light and heat, 
moisture and food, so act on them as to produce 
that organic structure which is so pleasing to 
the eye of intelligence, and is made in its growth 
and fruit to furnish such nourishment to the 
animal creation. In the animal frame, bone so 
fits into bone, and bone is so adapted to attached 
muscle, and the vital organs are so suited to 
each other and to the nerves and brain, that 
the organism becomes a wondrous unity, in 
which every part has a function and subserves 
the good of the whole. This final cause, pervad- 
ing, as it does, all nature, and especially every 
part of it bearing on animal comfort, is quite as 
obvious as the material or physical cause. Nor 
is it any valid objection that, as we know every- 
thing only partially and in progress, we cannot 
be prepared to pronounce upon the purposes of 
God- I give no credit for humility to those who 
tell us that it would be presumptuous in them to 
imagine that they can discover any of the de- 
signs of an infinite God. I am not disposed to 



54 



EOW 3IUCH IS CONTAINED 



lavish any sympathy on those who tell us, with a 
sigh, that they are so sorry that they cannot 
detect any special end in events which seem to 
move on like a stream in an unbroken flow. It 
is a great truth that we know but in part ; but 
this implies that we do know, though only in 
part. He who denies this consequence is logi- 
cally landing himself in a universal scepticism, 
which no man can consistently carry out. It is 
not required that we should profess to have 
" found out the work which God worketh from 
the beginning to the end," in order to entitle us 
consistently to affirm that we see so much of the 
work of God as to lead us to admire it and de- 
light in it. It is not needful that we should be 
able to fathom all the mysteries of nature, in 
order to be quite sure that we know some of its 
laws, and somewhat of its method. Many a one 
who does not comprehend all that is in the 
Principia of Newton, does yet rejoice that he ap- 
prehends so much of the Newtonian discoveries, 
and can appreciate what he understands. We 
who are uninitiated should not attempt to guess 
at all that is transacted in our great mercantile 
houses, which trade with the ends of the earth, 
or find out the purpose aimed at by the general 
in all his military movements, or by the Minis- 
terial Cabinet in all its counsels, though we may, 
without presumption, venture to say that we 



ZZV^ THE NA TURAL, 5 5 

see some of the means employed, and some of 
the ends accomphshed. I am usmg small mat- 
ters to illustrate great ones. We should cer- 
tainly never pretend to be able to find out all the 
purposes contemplated by God in any one of his 
acts and agencies, for I believe that, in the pleni- 
tude of his wisdom, he commonly accomplishes a 
great variety of ends by one and the same means. 
^' Canst thou by searching find out God ? Canst 
thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?" 
*' Such knowledge is too wonderful for me ; it is 
high, I cannot attain unto it." Still there is so 
much that we can know ; it is meant that we 
know it ; it is thrown open to us freely and un- 
grudgingly, as in a museum, or school, or garden, 
for this very purpose. " The secret things belong 
unto the Lord our God ; but those things which 
are revealed belong unto us and to our children." 
God's works are throughout a manifestation of 
God, and are, so far, a revelation of his will. 
The scientific man is quite certain that he has 
discovered laws ; they may or they may not be 
ultimate laws, but they are laws ruling in nature, 
and he can turn them to practical purposes. 
There are also in creation special ends which we 
can discover, and this without professing to know 
all the counsels of God. The fountain may be 
high up in mist or mountain beyond our reach, 
and the ocean into which the waters pour them- 



56 



EOW MUCH IS CONTAINED 



selves may be unexplorable in its vastness, still 
we know so much of the stream as it flows past 
us, or as we float on its bosom, to be quite sure 
that we see uses served by it, and know the 
direction in which it runs. I have really no 
moral tolerance for those who tell you that they 
are not sure whether the eye were made for 
seeing, or the ear for hearing, or the hand for 
grasping, or the feet for walking, or the ball and 
socket joint at the shoulder to give a convenient 
and easy motion to the arm. 

6. Nature throughout has a Eespect to Man. 
All objects on the earth minister to his bodily 
wants, and are, so far, subordinated to him. 
Geology seems to shew that when man was 
about to come on the scene, there are plants, 
unknown before, which make their appearance 
to sustain his life, and contribute to his enjoy- 
ment — such as wheat, and barley, and oats, and 
rye, and Indian corn, and millet, and rice, and 
the plants which yield wine, and oil, and odours, 
as well as most of those, such as roses, which are 
covered with the flowers which yield him such 
delight. When he comes, he "has dominion over 
the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and 
over every living thing that moveth on the earth." 
As he uses his power, his intelligence is evoked 
and strengthened ; for, if he would earn a suste- 
nance, or enjoy the full blessings of life, he must 



IN TEE NATURAL, 57 

cultivate the soil, and tend the plants, and care 
for the lower animals. The very order of nature, 
we have seen, is adapted to his contemplative 
intellect, which delights to resolve the complex 
structures of nature into their ingredients, to 
catch the classes according to which all the 
objects in nature are arranged, to trace the causes 
and combinations of causes from which all 
changes proceed, and to dwell on the propor- 
tioned forms and harmonious colours which 
everywhere draw our regards towards them. If 
we train ourselves to look on physical nature as 
a mean, having throughout a respect to man, to 
his happiness and elevation, I believe we will not 
be disinclined to suppose that there may be other 
and supernatural means provided to further the 
same general ends of beneficence and morality. 

And here it will be necessary to remove the 
impression, that because there are other pur- 
poses served by the agencies of heaven and 
earth, we are no longer entitled to look upon 
them as having the respect which our forefathers 
fondly imagined them to have towards the chil- 
dren of men. There w^as an excuse, they allow, 
for those who looked on the earth as the centre 
of the world, when they supposed that the hea- 
venly bodies had a peculiar reference to man ; 
but it is said to be absolutely ludicrous to 
entertain any such notion, now that we know 



58 HOW MUGS IS CONTAINED 

that the earth is a comparatively small body 
dangling round a vastly larger one, and that the 
stars are themselves worlds or centres of worlds. 
But I maintain that all this is the conception, 
not of large, hut of contracted minds, which 
look upon the great God as being like the great 
man, who must often- neglect affairs of less 
importance in attending to matters of mighty 
moment. It would be a most unfortunate nar- 
rowing of a boy's idea of a father's love, were 
some one to persuade him, now that he sees that 
the father has wide cares as a merchant, or 
wider cares as a statesman, that one so burdened 
cannot possibly feel so deep an interest in his 
family as at one time he was supposed to take. 
On the same principle, it would truly be a lower- 
ing, instead of an enlargement, of our ideas of 
God's greatness, were we tempted to believe 
that, in fulfilling his purposes of wisdom towards 
these other worlds we have come in sight of, he 
is obliged to withdraw his special regards from 
his intelligent and responsible creatures on the 
earth. Those who would rise to a full compre- 
hension of God's goodness, and of his greatness 
in his goodness, must learn to conceive of him, 
as not neglecting the part, because he has to 
take care of the mighty whole, and as making, 
in the riches of his resources and in the might 
of his love, as full a provision for our earth and 



JI^ TEE NATURAL. 59 

for each creature on it, as if there were no other 
world or no other created being in the universe. 
It is all true that the man of devout spirit is 
inclined to say, " When I consider thy heavens 
the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars 
which thou hast ordained ; what is man that 
thou art mindful of him, and the son of man 
that thou visitest him." But while he is amazed 
at the Divine condescension, he does not doubt 
that condescension. He believes that the hea- 
vens are the work of God's finger, and that the 
stars are ordained by God ; but he believes 
quite as firmly that God is mindful of the chil- 
dren of men, and graciously visits them. God's 
greatness is seen in his taking care of the little 
— as we reckon it in our littleness — equally with 
the great. The pansy, no doubt, is the product 
of wide physiological laws which have relations 
to many interests ; but it can be shewn that, by 
the shape it has been made to take, and the 
harmonious colours of yellow and purple and 
white which come out on its corolla, it is ex- 
quisitely suited to the eye and to the tastes of 
men. The sun lightens other planets ; but it 
lightens this one also as beneficently as if it had 
no other to shine on. These stars, no doubt, 
look far out with penetrating eye into space ; but 
I am persuaded that every unclouded night they 
look down with benign regard upon our world. 



60 



HOW MUCH IS CONTAINED 



7. In nature there is a Special Providence. In 
all ages mankind have been inclined to believe 
not only in general law but in particular provi- 
sions which have a respect to the individual man 
and his special wants. The views entertained, 
both of one and other of these, by men of con- 
tracted vision and limited prospects, have been 
very narrow, and their opinions of the relation 
of the one to the other have commonly been very 
confused, and at times very erroneous. Still, 
mankind generally have risen to some idea of a 
settled system on the one hand, and of certain 
dispositions or interventions on the other; and 
they can be justified " in believing in the ex- 
istence of both. I maintain that advancing 
knowledge has not set aside either of these. I 
deny that in throwing open larger views of the 
general order it has made it necessary for us to 
overlook the special providence ; for while God 
has so arranged his physical agents, that general 
laws, such as those of the seasons and of the 
stages in the life of animated beings, every where 
prevail, and prevail for the good of man, he has 
also so disposed them that by their combina- 
tion or coincidence, crossing or collision, they 
produce individual incidents, which exercise a 
mighty influence on the world at large, or which 
meet the state and the wants of individual men 
at momentous or critical times in their history. 



IN THE NATURAL. 61 

The seasons revolve according to a regular sys- 
tem, but in the very midst of the heat of sum- 
mer there may interpose, — and this by the pre- 
arrangements of nature, — a storm which wrecks 
the persons or fortunes of hundreds, or gives a 
new turn to the whole life and destiny of some 
individual. There is an average hfe for man 
upon the earth, but, by a natural disposition of 
natural agents, the child w^hich has nestled itself 
in the warmest affections of a parent's love, may 
have its life nipped in the bud ; or the youth, 
full of hope and activity, may have all his energies 
for ever arrested, and his fond plans finally frus- 
trated by unexpected, but not unordained, disease 
or death ; and one or other of these events may 
come home with very peculiar force to the heart 
of some interested individual, and have a greater 
influence on his or her future life in time or 
eternity, than has been exercised by all the 
more orderly events on which the scientific or 
philosophic mind is so apt to dwell. By all 
means let us observe the order in nature, for it 
is the work of God ; but as we do so, let us not 
overlook the mutual fitting of objects and powers 
by which the order is produced ; and let us also 
note how, by this same predisposition of laws 
and agents, there are brought about individual 
occurrences by which a mighty power is exerted 
on the destinies of the world at large, or of par- 



62 



EOW MUCH IS CONTAINED 



ticular persons ; by which great men appear on 
the emergency to do their appropriate work, or 
by which great tides of popular feehng are raised 
up, evidently by a power from above drawing 
them, and to keep the sluggish waters of our 
earth from stagnating ; by which the archtyrant 
is cut off when his schemes of wickedness were 
about to be consummated; by which the poor 
man has his wants supplied in the time of need ; 
by which the guilty is detected, as by lightning 
flashing out and glaring upon him in the dark- 
ness as he did the deed; by which the falsely 
accused has his character fully vindicated and all 
suspicions dispelled ; by which the man waiting 
for instruction is rebuked when he would become 
vain and proud, or cheered when he would lose 
his courage and sink ; and by which the good 
man has his purposes of usefulness helped on 
to their completion — openings being disclosed 
to him on the right hand and on the left — 
mountains which seemed to shut him in, 
shewing an outlet for him as he advances — 
and the stream which bears him along hav- 
ing a channel provided for it, till it carries 
him to his destination." We can surely be- 
lieve that He who has so provided for the 
meanest of the earthly wants of his creatures, 

* The author has explained this fully in the " Method of Divine 
Government, Physical and Moral."— -Bk. II., chap. ii. 



IN THE NATURAL. 63 

will also provide for their deeper and spiritual 
wants. 

II. In nature there are Souls with High 
Endowments. 

It is an unfortunate incidental effect of the 
division of labour in science, and of the suc- 
cess which has attended the study of the physical 
sciences, and of the interest which has, in con- 
sequence, collected around them and the phe- 
nomena investigated by them, that the most 
wondrous object disclosed to us in our world has 
been overlooked by many who have a large know- 
ledge of the heavens and earth, or a minute 
acquaintance with particular departments of 
them. Nature is a vastly richer field than some 
imagine ; it has gems, which many never discern, 
as well as the stone and the clay which mankind 
are ever looking at. There is more in it than 
mechanical, and chemical, and electric force, — 
more than the plant, with its vital power, more 
than the animal, with its sensations, its appe- 
tences, and its incipient reason. This earth has 
something nobler on its surface than the tele- 
scope has ever discovered in sun or star. This 
epoch of our world's history has in it a being 
vastly better, and, alas ! vastly worse, than all the 
brutes which enjoyed life on its surface in the 
earlier geological ages. In the complex but com- 
pact structure of nature it is evident that some 



64 



HOW MVGH IS CONTAINED 



parts are higher than others ; — some heing, as it 
were, the moving powers, others the mere channels 
of transmission ; some, as it were, the head and 
heart, and others the mere arms or hmhs. In this 
economy the animate has a higher place than the 
inanimate. The plant, by its living power, draws 
rude matter into itself, and turns it to its own 
uses ; while, again, the animal feeds upon the 
plant, and subordinates it to its own superior 
functions; and above them all is the soul of 
man, with its conscience and its free will, capable 
of controlling the animal instincts, and turning 
them to high moral ends. There is machinery 
in our world, we admit, but there are workmen 
with throbbing hearts moving and labouring in 
the midst of it, and these are also worthy of 
our attention and regards — the very machinery 
has throughout a respect to them. Verily, he 
must be guilty of a flagrant oversight who, in 
considering nature, overlooks human nature. It 
is as if one were to visit a great city, and admire 
its masonry and its architecture, and take no 
notice of the inhabitants, with their strivings 
and ambition, their sins and their sorrows; or 
travel through a rural district, and feel interested 
in the cottages and the culture of the fields, but 
neglect to make the acquaintance of the tillers 
of the ground, with their cares, their feuds, their 
industry and their vices ; or as if one were to 



IN THE NATURAL. 65 

inspect a school, and note its order and its 
discipline, and not think of the motives throb- 
bing in the hearts of the children ; or it is as 
if one were to look down from a height on a 
battle-field, and follow the military movements, 
and never once be impressed with the passions 
quivering in the breasts of the combatants, or 
moved by the writhings of the womided and 
dying. 

1. Let us consider that the soul has high 
Intellectual Endowments. The mechanical in- 
quirer is well employed when he is seeking to 
obtain the right expression of the laws of motion 
and force ; the physiologist is fulfilling a very 
important function w4ien he is trying to catch 
the more recondite laws of life ; but let both 
acknowledge that in the mind of man there are 
still higher laws at work — if only the psycholo- 
gist could seize them as they act, or rather that 
they exist and ever operate whether he does or 
does not succeed in apprehending or expressing 
them. And let not the psychologist, in his 
attention to the inferior parts of our mental 
nature, miss the higher and nobler. As he looks 
at the dependence of mind and body, let him not 
neglect its higher and more independent powers ; 
as he analyses our sensations, and our instinc- 
tive feelings, and our remembrances, and our 
associations, let him not omit the higher attri- 



66 



EOW MUCH IS CONTAINED 



butes of mind. Whether metaphysicians have or 
have not succeeded in unfolding them, let us 
realise how much is implied in such an attr" i 
as consciousness, the consciousness of self-~.ae. 
consciousness of ourselves as persons ; how mucii 
is involved in our higher intelligence; ir ■ 
being able to perceive truth, and necessary truth ; 
in our being able to know things, and the rela- 
tion of things ; to know the necessity of mathe- 
matical and other relations, and the indelible 
distinction between right and wrong. These in- 
telligent acts shew, how closely we are allied to 
higher and supernatural intelligences. 

S. Let us consider how much is involved in 
our having a Free JVill, and in our being free 
agents. A fact is now before us of an altogether 
different kind from those which meet us in any 
of the lower departments of nature. In behalf of 
that fact we have the testimony of consciousness 
so clear, so decided, so assuring, that it needs no 
confirming evidence, and can be set aside by no 
seemingly conflicting proof. In order to gain all 
we need for our argument, we do not require to 
take a side with the Augustinian or the Pelagian, 
with the Calvinist or Arminian : ^ve assume 
nothing beyond what Augustine and Calvin both 
acknowledge — that man has, in his essential 
nature, a power and freedom of choice, which 
makes him a free and responsible agent. Here, 



IK TEE NATURAL. 67 

then, we have a being raised above all other 
sublunary agents, and closely allied to that free 
agent v^ho is above nature, and from whose free 
exercise of power all nature has proceeded. At 
this point we have come in sight of that pos- 
sibility of sinning which has issued in a fearful 
actuality; and this is the awful fact that seems 
to call for an interposition from a supernatural 
sphere. 

3, The natural man has a Conscience, which 
discerns a moral good and a moral evil ; which 
declares that there is a distinction between the 
two, indelible and immutable ; v^^hich points up to 
a law altogether different in kind from mathema- 
tical or physical law; a law with obligations re- 
quiring us to do this, and not to do that; a law 
above man, implying a lawgiver above nature — a 
lawgiver w4io must also be a judge, and call man 
into account for the "things done in his body, 
according to that he hath done, whether it be 
good or bad." Every one carries in his very 
nature feelings and principles which announce 
and guarantee all these truths ; and whoever 
believes them, as the great body of mankind do 
believe them, in a less or more conscious man- 
ner, feels himself under a supernatural authority, 
responsible to a supernatural being, and about to 
exist in a supernatural state of things. 

4. Man is, in his very nature, a Religious Being. 



C8 JIOW UUCH IS CONTAINED 

This is attested at once by every man's internal 
feeling and by the records of history. Different 
accounts bave been given of what it is in man's 
nature whicb makes bim tbe subject of religious 
convictions, of religious fears, and religious hopes. 
Some have supposed it to spring from an im- 
mediate intuition or consciousness of God. I 
am more inclined to look upon it as the natural 
and intended result of several native intuitions 
called fortb by, and proceeding upon, certain very 
obvious observed facts. The native principle of 
causation ever prompts man to seek for a cause 
of tbat order and beneficence which every^vhere 
meet our eye in nature, and in the chase after 
subordinate causes be is never satisfied till be 
reaches a supernatural and Divine cause. Our 
moral faculty recognises, and looks up to, a law 
bavin g authority, and this law is the expression 
of tbe holy nature of a lawgiver. Our conception 
and belief in regard to infinity can find notbing 
but an abstraction till they rest in an infinite 
God. According to tbe account now given, all 
tbe steps in this process are not immediately 
intuitive, nor is the whole apodictive or demon- 
strative like a mathematical proposition. There 
are observational or experiential elements enter- 
ing into the argument ; but these are facts which 
can be seen by all, and which press themselves 
on the attention of every one ; and, with these 



IN TRE NATURAL, oy 

facts before the mind, there are fundamental 
laws of thought and belief, which lead up to the 
conviction of a God to whom all power belongs, 
and who acts in all action, who is good and does 
good, who is entitled to our obedience, as he 
claims our obedience, and is greater than we can 
conceive — so great, indeed, that he cannot be 
greater. The conviction thus wrought in us is 
one which may be very much crushed by intel- 
lectual degradation, and become confused, or all 
but overcome, through sophistry; still it is there 
in the breast, very much undeveloped it may be, 
but ready to be developed — like the plant in the 
dark cellar, as it were, longing for the light and 
creeping towards it; ready to come forth under 
influences in any measure favourable ; often 
bursting out in very adverse circumstances ; 
making unsophisticated man everywhere, from 
love or from fear, from selfishness or from duty, 
a worshipper of the God or gods recognized by 
him, and rendering those who have been misled 
by infidel sophistry unsatisfied and restless, and 
ever doubtful of their own doubts. 

5. The soul of man is Immortal. Our convic- 
tion of this truth, like that in regard to the 
existence of God, seems to be the issue of a 
number of mental principles looking to external 
facts, and all concurring towards one conclusion. 
The sense and consciousness of self as a separate 



70 



EOW MTTCE IS CONTAINED 



person, the absence of any evidence that this 
self dies, the shrinking from the very thought of 
annihilation, the impression that the soul may 
live when the body dies, all conspire to produce a 
deep conviction, w^hich can scarcely be eradicated, 
and which no good man would eradicate. Our 
sense of moral obligation, and of responsibility, 
exerts a yet greater power over us — we feel that 
we must appear before God in judgment. These, 
and it may be other feelings, have raised, or, aided 
by tradition so far preserved through these feel- 
ings, have kept alive, a deep persuasion among 
all nations that the soul at death has to appear 
at a judgment seat, to be there consigned to a 
place of happiness or of woe. 

III. Nature has within it abounding Sin. 
. It requires some skill to place this truth in its 
proper light (or darkness) as a truth of natural 
religion. For there can be no doubt that we 
owe, to some extent, the knowledge and the sense 
of sin to the revelation that God has been pleased 
to make of his will. Still there is a sense of sin, 
developed or undeveloped, in all men. Every 
one is obliged to acknowledge the justice of the 
charge when he is dealing honestly with himself, 
though he may deny it with great vehemence 
when others attack him, or when he is determined 
to defend himself from the reproaches of con- 
science. Again, the extensive prevalence of vice 



IN TEE NATURAL. *7l 

in the world is recorded by every faithful chro- 
nicler, is mourned over by every moralist and 
philanthropist. The extent and depth of the 
evil are apparent from the very efforts made to 
stem it, and which may have helped to turn it 
away from particular channels, but have not suc- 
ceeded in drying up its bitter waters. The Word 
of God presupposes the fact of the existence of 
sin, even as it supposes the fact of the existence 
of God; and it charges man, in the name of 
God, with being ungodly, and expects to meet 
with a response in the heart and conscience, and 
is, in fact, answered by an echo, often very weak, 
and at times interfered with in the noises of the 
day, and not heard when disturbed by the tumults 
of life, but audible ever in the quieter hours of 
reflection and self-examination — as we have- 
heard an echo in the quiet of evening, which 
would not sound in the bustle of the day and 
when .the winds were raging. It is in very pro- 
portion as persons realise this great fact that 
they are prepared to listen to the revelation 
which God has been pleased to make in the 
Gospel. Those who speculatively deny the 
natural truth will be tempted to doubt of, or 
deny, the supernatural one. Those who feel 
the deep natural wants, and who see very clearly 
that nature cannot remedy them, will not be 
indisposed to welcome the supernatural remedy, 



72 



HOW MUCH IS CONTAINED 



provided it comes with the proper evidential 
support. 

For mark what it is we meet with every- 
where in the world around us, and deep down 
there in that dark nature which we carry with 
us. The facts are as patent as any that physi- 
cal science looks at, and they have a prior and 
a deeper claim upon our immediate attention, 
for they have a closer connexion with our essen- 
tial being and our destiny. We have a con- 
science within us which announces, on the one 
hand, that there is a moral law above us and 
binding on us, and, on the other hand, that 
w^e have not kept that law. We find proof, on 
all hands, that God hates sin, and yet we see sin 
abounding all around us in the world which God 
has made, and over which he rules. Everywhere 
in heaven and earth do we see order, and yet 
everywhere, in the midst of that order on earth, 
do we see sin, which is manifestly disorder. 
Physical law is viewed in the highest light when 
regarded as a mean to moral good as an end, 
and yet how frequently do the means fail to 
secure the end, — and that pure sun lights men 
as they go to perform deeds of darkness, and the 
riches of the earth incite lusts and pamper 
luxury. We are sure that God must punish sin> 
and we see him often punish it in this world ; 
and yet quite as often do we see v/ickedness 



IN THE NATURAL. 



73 



triumphing. How often is the judgment delayed, 
very possibly that it may only be the more terrible 
at last — as we have seen the cloud gather and 
thicken, that in the end it may burst with more 
fury. Or rather may not the punishment be 
delayed in order that the offender may repent and 
be forgiven ? yes, forgiven — we look for it, we cry 
for it, we hope for it. In our world the shadow 
pursues the light, but the hght also pursues the 
shadow — which is from a light shining above us, 
though obstructed by the vapours arising from 
the damps of the earth. Clouds there are, 
threatening destruction, yet there is a bow upon 
them — from a still shining sun — encouraging us 
as by a smile. Yet, while we hope, we cannot 
point to a ground of hope ; the conscience is 
there, ever ready to raise its voice as an accuser, 
but where is the voice to declare the pardon ? 
He who ponders these facts, in their relation one 
to another, as intently as the physicist does the 
unexplained phenomena of the universe, will find 
himself in terrible perplexity. He hears the 
earth, in its travailing, uttering a cry, but, as 
he listens, he can hear no answer from the earth, 
and he looks up and almost expects to hear it 
from heaven. He admires nature — he cannot 
but admire it, and he approves himself as he 
admires it, and yet he is confident that there is 
something w^anting, and he argues that, under the 



74 



HOW MUCH IS CONTAINED 



government of a good God, there must be some- 
thing to join on to what he sees broken off so ab- 
ruptly. He argues that, outside the natural, there 
must be a supernatural part — the two constitut- 
ing the perfect whole ; and he infers this almost 
as confidently as Columbus, and others before 
him, argued that there was a new world lying 
West of the old, long before it was actually 
discovered — almost as surely as mathematicians 
concluded that there must be a new planet out- 
side the old ones and part of the system, when 
yet the telescope had not lighted upon it. In 
consequence of the scientific expectations, many 
an eye looked from Teneriffe far into the AYest, 
in order to see the new land, and not a few 
thought they saw it when it was only a cloud 
that appeared; and many a glass was directed 
to the heavens to find the wanting planet — some 
thinking they had found it when it was only an 
old star that came into view ; and, in like man- 
ner, multitudes have looked prematurely for the 
supernatural revelation, and been disappointed or 
deceived ; yet these very anxious looks, and the 
repeated belief in spite of failure, prove the depth 
and reasonableness of the expectation, which, 
again, is a sort of prognostic or guarantee that 
it will, somehow or other, at one time or other, 
be gratified. 

IV. In nature there is a Mokal Government. 



IN THE NATUBAL. i 

riiis government is very complex. It is so 
because of the variety of ends which it has to 
serve, in a state of things in which man is free 
and man has sinned, in which God condemns 
sin and favours the sinner. 

1. God encourages the moralhj good. This is 
evident, first of all, in the agreeable feelings 
which all benevolent affections raise, and in the 
echoing pleasure which the reflective conscience 
feels in the contemplation of all good actions. 
These are the immediate rewards which virtue 
reaps. They are quite as clearly rewards as 
those given in the family by the father to his 
obedient children, or those bestowed in the 
school by the master to his diligent pupils. 
There are other and more indirect encour- 
agements; — in industry commonly securing a 
competent portion of this world's goods ; in ex- 
cellence of character gaining trust and esteem, 
and opportunities of rising in this world; in 
the benevolent being helped on in their schemes 
of usefulness, and in love kindling love in 
return. 

2. Siji is so far discountenanced and punished. 
There are the direct consequences in the pain- 
ful sensations which accompany all the mahgn 
affections ; in the weariness and ennui that 
come after sinful indulgences, as vultures do on 
the back of the carnage ; and, above all, in the 



76 



HOW MUCH IS CONTAINED 



accusing conscience which gives its warning — at 
least after the first transgression in a-particular 
line, and raises up fears to haunt the guilty 
wherever they go. The judicial condemnations, 
the impositions of fines, the confinements and 
the executions, are not more certainly penalties 
in the government of nations, than these inward 
reproaches are punishments in the kingdom of 
God. There are other appointments which have 
also a penal character. Thus we see idleness 
and vicious indulgences landing the possessor in 
poverty; and the drunkard and licentious, as it 
were, sold into slavery to pay the expense of 
their lusts ; and the deceitful caught in the net 
he has laid for others. At times, too, we see 
the bold transgressor, who has lifted his head as 
a headland facing the sky, struck visibly as by 
lightniog from heaven, or wicked men who have 
combined to raise an impious tower of defiance 
scattered by a confusion among the builders. 
The connexion between the moon's motions 
and the tides of the ocean, is not more certain 
than that between sin and suffering; — the de- 
pendence in both these cases may seem some- 
what complex, and to have exceptions — which, 
however, are only seeming; but in both it can 
be firmly estabhshed, — it being vastly more 
important, however, that we observe it in the 
latter case than in the former, and also certain 



IN THE NATURAL. 77 

that mankind generally have been constrained 
by their apprehensions to attend with far greater 
eagerness to the moral than even to the physical 
connection. 

3. God is delaying the punishment of transgressors, 
thus giving to all a period of probation. He is 
good and kind, and often contnmes long to be 
so, to those who have broken and are still break- 
ing his law. " He maketh his sun to rise on 
the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on 
the just and the unjust." The governor is 
evidently also the father of those he is called 
to condemn, and w^e see that he is loth to 
condemn and slow to strike, and all that he 
may give space and opportunity for repentance. 

4. God will in the end punish offenders. We 
argue this very immediately from the imperative 
character of the law, which cannot let go its re- 
quirements and must exact its penalty, and from 
the immutable character of God the governor, 
who upholds that law as his own law prescribed 
as the rule of the universe. It is clear that the 
eye of our ruler is ever upon us, and when his 
uplifted arm is staid for a time, it is only that it 
may come down with more terrible power in the 
end — as the avalanche collects for years, and 
then, as it is loosened by a heavenly beam, de- 
scends on the instant. Often may we track 
Divine justice pursuing its victim through a long 



78 HOW MUCH IS CONTAINED 

series of years, and a complicated course of 
things, and at last springing upon it at the oppor- 
tune moment when escape is hopeless. The 
explosion which rouses the whole community is 
from the simple application of a spark to a train, 
which had long been laid. All this prepares us 
to believe that God will by no means spare the 
guilty, and that, " though hand join in hand, 
the wicked shall not be unpunished." 

6. Now, it is because the government of God 
has all these ends to accomplish, and has to deal 
Avith such a multitude and diversity of human 
beings, so mixed up one with another in the 
various relations of life, in its family ties, its 
friendships, its connexions of business, of neigh- 
bourhood, and of country, that it is so complicated 
and so difficidt of interpretation, God must en- 
courage the good, and yet not so encourage them 
as to pamper their self- righteousness and make 
them feel that they have no sin. He has to shew 
his disapproval of the sin, and yet he would spare 
the sinner and allure him to repentance. He 
spares the sinner, and yet he must not counte- 
nance him in his sin. By one and the same 
event, one man has his wickedness exposed, and 
another his innocence cleared ; one is cheered 
and quickened, another is rebuked and arrested. 
Every member of the household is in a different 
mental or moral or spiritual state, and needs a 



IN THE NATURAL. 79 

(liiferent lesson ; and the family occurrence has 
a lesson to each, to father and mother, to sister 
and brother — possibly far-reaching consequences 
to that little infant. The great public event 
which is a judgment upon the community, 
is a blessing to certain individuals ; or while 
it is an appropriate trial to certain persons, 
it is a benefit to the nation. Often does the 
warning seem to come after the judgment, as 
the report comes after the shot has done its 
work — as the roar of the thunder is heard after 
the lightning has smitten its victim ; but the 
audible signals may be a warning to others, and 
the judgment has at last descended on those 
who got admonition upon admonition without 
attending, and who have now to be cut off with- 
out farther notice. When the instruments of 
God's government have such diverse ends to 
effect, no one should pretend to be able to find 
out ail the purposes of God in any one occur- 
rence ; it will generally be enough that he dis- 
covers the lesson which it reads to himself as an 
individual. Our Lord severely rebukes those 
who looked upon calamities as judgments proving 
guilt on the part of those on whom they fell, 
and tells us expressly that those who had been 
slain while offering sacrifices at the altar, and 
those on whom the tower of Siloam had fallen, 
were not to be reckoned as sinners above others 



80 



now MUCH IS CONTAINED 



(Luke xiii. 1 — 4). But while we must be on our 
guatd against rash judgments in individual cases, 
every one is expected to discover certain great 
moral laws, such as the law of reward, the law of 
penalty, the law of forbearance, and the law^ of 
final retribution. Unsophisticated men have ever, 
in fact, held more or less firmly by these general 
beliefs, and though they have often felt the dis- 
pensations of providence to be dark and myste- 
rious, and experienced an extreme difficulty in 
determining in any given case which of these 
purposes, or how many of them, are intended to 
be served, or, indeed, what purpose has been 
accomplished, and have often pronounced rash 
and uncharitable judgments on others, yet they 
have always, and in spite of appearances, held 
that the judge of all the earth must ever do right, 
and have believed and been sure that a just end 
has been served, even when they have failed to 
discover it. Admirable as is the machinery em- 
ployed in the evolution of the bodies of the solar 
system, and admirable as are the arrangements 
for enabling organisms to fulfil their functions, I 
am convinced that the adjustment of means and 
end in God's government will be seen to be vastly 
more wondrous and w^ise when the whole wheels 
and their fittings and products are fully disclosed 
to the saints in the world to come, and the 
meaning of every dispensation clearly explained. 



IN THE NATURAL. 81 

But while we have so much certainty on these 
topics, we find the certainty only landing us in 
deeper uncertainty. We are sure that God 
hates, and that he will punish sin, and we hope 
that he is ready to forgive it ; but we have no 
means of bringing together and reconciling these 
different convictions. We here fall in with an 
awful chasm ; we believe that in a world, under a 
good God, there must be some bridge to span it, 
and yet as we grope in the darkness we cannot 
find it. He who has realized all this certainty and 
uncertainty will not turn away with levity or con- 
tempt from what seems a supernatural method of 
reconcilement, and of turning the uncertainty 
into certainty. 



82 



TEE NATURAL A MANIFESTATIOK 



CHAPTER V, 



THE NATURAL A MANIFESTATION OF THE SUPEE- 
NATUEAL. 



Before mounting into the higher and more 
recondite region of the Supernatural, we may 
gather into a few groups some of the truths 
picked up by us in the lower fields of the 
Natural. 

§ 1- 

Religion should never be regarded as an 
isolated act or exercise. Godliness should run 
through the whole man, his whole temper, 
beliefs, and acts, and should guide him in the 
view he takes of all the objects coming under 
his notice. In particular, it should lead us to 
look on nature as a whole, and on every part of 
it as a manifestation of God. 

The natural implies the supernatural. The 
fitting of every one object to every other, and 
the order of nature as the result, presuppose a 
disposer of the several agents. The combination 
of means towards a beneficent end shows design 



OF THE 8VPERNATITRAL. - oo 

contemplated by a designer. In particular, the 
soul of man, with its free will, its intelligence, and 
its reason speculative and moral, claims for its 
author a living Being possessed of these qualities 
in an infinite degree. The intuitive convictions 
of the mind, looking to obvious facts, insist on all 
this ; insist that the world, as an effect, implies a 
being above it as a cause, indeed, are not satisfied 
till we rise beyond the chain of causation to the 
imcaused, beyond the dependent to the indepen- 
dent. We cannot understand the physical, unless 
we bring in the hyperphysical. In contemplat- 
ing the finite we are necessitated to believe that 
there is an infinite. The sense of moral obliga- 
tion proceeds on the existence of a moral law, 
which implies a lawgiver, who is the judge of 
his intelligent creatures, and of all their actions, 
and who must, therefore, institute a searching 
judgment day, and distribute impartial retribu- 
tions in a supernatural state of existence. 

§ 2. 

The religious spirit recognizes God in all 
nature ; it sees him as upholding all substance ; 
as the power in all force ; the actor in all action ; 
the mover in all motion ; living in all life ; 
shaping in all forms ; organizing in all systems ; 
himself the light and the fountain from which all 
other lights are fed ; knowing in all knowledge ; 



84 TEE NATURAL A IfAmFESTATIOIf 

himself lovely, and the author of the loveliness in 
every kind of beauty ; himself good and in every 
good deed; compassionating wherever there is 
sorrow ; helping in all timely succour ; the judge 
when justice is dispensed ; the avenger when 
wrong is remedied ; cherishing affection to all 
his creatures ; and loving in all their holy love. 

§ 3. 

But man in his ungodliness has failed to see 
God as he should have done.' This ungodly 
spirit has taken various forms. Atheism sees 
God in nothing, — fails to see his wisdom in the 
order of nature, and his providence in the gifts 
bestowed on his creatures; and it is atheism, 
whether with the ancient sceptic it does not, or 
with the modern sceptic it does, discover order 
and method in the universe. Pantheism consists 
in faihng to distinguish God from his works, and 
this, whether it looks upon the works as behig 
God, or on God as existing only in his works. 
Superstition sees God in certain of his works, 
but not in others ; in those only which excite, 
and move, and startle, not in those which are 
more regular, and constant, and familiar. True 
piety sees God in every agent, and would gather 
from every occurrence the lessons which it is 
fitted to read; and it is true piety, whether it 
does or does not discover the second or instru- 



OF THE SUPERNATURAL. '^^ 

mental cause, — the difference between the piety 
of the unscientific and the scientific man lying 
only in this, that the former may discover God, 
and God only, as the actor, whereas the other 
sees, besides, somewhat of the system on which 
God proceeds, and the physical agents employed 
by him. As against the atheist, who believes 
only in fate, or who looks on all things as pro- 
duced by mechanical causation, or as brought 
about by chance,* piety ascribes every object, and 
traces every event, to God; it will not hand 
over the beneficent order of the seasons to blind 
law, nor abandon the extraordinary coincidences 
of Providence to accident; it cannot allow the 
course of things to take the credit of these 
bright stars and beauteous flowers; and when 
health is restored, after a period of sickness, it 
gives the glory and the thanks to Him who has 
arranged the means and been operating in them. 
It rejoices, with the pantheist, to see God in all 
his works ; but it will not allow that God is 
exhausted by his works ; it believes that God 
was before his works, is above his works, and is 
independent of them. As against the super- 
stitious man, it claims for God the symmetry and 
the harmony of nature, as well as those occur- 
rences which may seem to come as anomalies or 
interferences; it discovers him in the storm, but 
it also feels him in the calm ; it sees him in the 



OO TSE NATURAL A MANIFESTATION 

disease which prostrates our energies and makes 
us realize our helplessness, but it also constrains 
us to recognize him in the health which has 
buoyed us up for years. 

§ ^• 
The ungodly spirit may coexist with all de- 
grees of ignorance or, of knowledge as to the 
system of nature. It may exist in the most 
ignorant peasant, or in the most degraded 
savage, who discerns in the earth only the clay 
and the clod ; who can appreciate the tree as 
bearing fruit or yielding shelter, but discovers 
nothing else in it; w^ho appreciates his sheep 
and his cattle, only as beasts to yield him sus- 
tenance and clothing; and who esteems the sun 
merely as a beneficent light for the day, and the 
moon and stars as useful lamps hung out in the 
darkness of night. It may dwell in the breasts 
of the half-educated or semi-civilized, who see 
natural law, and natural law only, in the more 
regular occurrences, — in the revolving stars and 
revolving seasons, in the springing of the grass 
and grain, and in the growth and sustenance of 
his own frame, — and who divide other and more 
irregular occurrences between chance and the 
God or gods momentarily loved or feared for the 
gifts sent or the judgments which may seem im- 
pending. It may lodge, in intensest keenness. 



OF THE SUPERNATURAL. 87 

ready, when provoked, to break into terrible bit- 
terness, in the deepest heart of our men of 
science, who, in studjdng and admiring mecha- 
nical power, and chemical and electrical forces, 
and vital energy, and in viewing the adaptation 
of every one part to every other merely as the 
condition of existence, resist and resent the pre- 
sence of a living and spiritual God acting in 
all these agencies, and employing them for the 
accomplishment of his moral ends. 

§ 5. 

The religious spirit is equally compatible with 
all degrees of ignorance in respect of the order 
of nature. The rudest barbarian, the unedu- 
cated labourer in our civilized countries, the 
child just beginning to use its senses intelli- 
gently, may be taught to contemplate every 
object in earth or sky, may be taught to regard 
star and flower, tree and mountain, shower and 
sunshine, prosperity and adversity, life and death, 
as the operation of God's hand, — the physical 
cause being all the while concealed or unknown. 
The man more intellectually advanced may dis- 
cover order and law in certain courses of things 
which look constant and settled, as in the mo- 
tions of the heavenly bodies, and the ordinances 
of the seasons which supply him with food ; while 
in other occurrences, as in his preservation, from 



88 



THE NATURAL A MANIFESTATION 



eminent danger, and the opportunities of re- 
ceiving special privileges, he may discover inter- 
ferences, or rather dispositions, to accomplish a 
special end ; but he deUghts to acknowledge God 
and his wisdom and goodness both in the regular 
positions and the irregular interpositions of 
things. Finally, he who has fallen in most 
thoroughly with the spirit and the method of in- 
duction, and who believes in universal law reign- 
ing in all ages past and present, even in stars 
visible only by the telescope, and in molecules 
invisible by the microscope, in every change 
of our ever changing bodily state, and in every 
impulse of our ever active minds, may have a 
faith as strong as that of the child or peasant, 
while it is more enUghtened and expanded. The 
only difference between these cases is, that, in 
the first, the man of faith sees God and God only 
in his work ; that, in the second, he observes a 
general plan in some of God's works, and a special 
end in others, and the presence of God in both ; 
while, in the third, he beholds a general plan 
in all, but a plan arranged for the very purpose 
of accomplishing all and each of the purposes of 
God, general and special. In the first, the 
intellect could take in no more, but the faith 
was as extensive as the intelligence, so that, 
wherever a work was discerned, there, also, the 
workof was acknowledged. In the second case, 



OF THE SUPERNATURAL. 



89 



the man's intellectual vision was enlarged and 
his faith widened with it ; he got glimpses of an 
order, which he contemplated as a Divine plan, 
and also of particular purposes secured. In 
the third, science has carried him to a height 
whence he observes that the design is so uni- 
versal as to require no interferences, that in the 
plan itself are such adaptations, such windings 
round the object meant to be preserved, and 
turnings where an obstacle presents itself, that 
the most minute purposes of God are fully exe- 
cuted. He knows that the lily grows by natural 
law, but he believes also that it grows by the ar- 
rangement and the very power of God, and that 
God clothes it with beauty. He knows that the 
sparrow lives and dies according to physiological 
laws, but he knows also that a sparrow cannot 
fall to the ground without God. 

§ 6. 
Let not the scientific or half scientific man 
smile at the piety of his child, or ridicule the 
devoutness of his servant, who discerns the 
great acting power, but may have missed the 
secondary instrument; who knows that God 
makes his sun to shine, though he is not 
aware that his beams come in vibrations ; who 
i3eheves that God sends the rain, though he has 
no idea that electricity has to do with it. Nor 



90 



THE NATURAL A MANIFESTATION 



let the ignorant man, in his ignorance, charge 
the philosopher with atheism when he delights 
to detect not only the Divine presence and 
power, but the Divine plan, and to look into 
the internal mechanism which makes the hands 
to move over the face of the great timepiece 
standing before him in nature. But we behove 
to rebuke the peasant and the very savage, when 
he can inhale the breeze of heaveu and eat the 
corn of earth, without giving God thanks. And 
we are entitled to reprove the philosopher, and 
this in the very measure of his pretensions to a 
higher light, when he discovers order, but fails 
to notice design ; when he examines the struc- 
ture of the machine, but overlooks the name of 
the Maker inscribed on it; as he incessantly 
watches the apparatus, but avoids taking any 
notice of the great moral and spiritual ends 
promoted by it. 

■ § r. 

We cannot with any propriety say that man- 
kind, in these latter days, are brought into closer 
contact with the natural ; for in early times 
most persons had to earn their sustenance by 
hunting wild beasts, or tending their herds, or 
tilling the ground ; and in " this age of great 
cities" multitudes are very much removed from 
close intercourse with green fields and trees, 



OF TEE SVFEENATURAL. i> i 

with foYds and cattle. But to counterbalance 
this, the educated are now trained to look more 
intently on the scientific structure of nature ; and 
the dwellers in the villas that girdle our great 
cities, and the summer saunterers by the sea 
shore, and the autumnal ramblers over our 
mountains, bring themselves to appreciate every 
varied aspect of sea and sky, of rock and moun- 
tain, and they talk of nature with a rapture which 
would have appeared affectation to our fore- 
fathers. This state of things has its temptations. 
That which was meant to be a veil to keep us 
from being blinded by the effulgence of the light 
— while it let the glory of God shine through — 
we have made a screen to conceal him, and we 
have gazed at the screen, and the figures upon 
it, and we have stayed there without looking on 
the living face beyoDd. The more vulgar minds 
stop short, and satisfy themselves with the com- 
forts, the wealth, the glitter of this world, cher- 
ishing meanwhile no love to the giver, and feeling 
in no way their need of God himself, as better 
than all his gifts. Minds of a higher but not a 
holier spirit content themselves with inspecting 
the machinery ; like children, they gaze at the 
chariot, its wheels, and its motions, but without 
looking above it to Him who rides on it so ma- 
jestically to scatter blessings and administer 
justice. Others, more refined, are exposed to a 



92 THE NATURAL A MANIFESTATION 

dijSferent class of temptations ; they are seduced 
by their highly cultivated. tastes into the worship 
of foam -born beauty. 



But that high-born soul of ours can never be 
satisfied with the mere mechanism of nature. 
The railway steam-engine is an imposing object, 
as it moves on towards us so determinedly, as it 
sweeps by us with so fixed a purpose on the 
way which has been prepared for it towards its 
station, which must be duly reached at the 
appointed minute. But, as we look at it, we love 
to think that human intelligence has planned 
it ; we are relieved when we are able to believe 
that a conscientious skill is guiding it ; we love 
to see it bearing human beings along with it 
on errands of business or of pleasure ; and we 
would not choose that there should be nothing 
in our world but iron-bound roads and unrelent- 
ing machinery; nay, we long at times to get 
away from it, to be out of the reach of its smoke 
and the sound of its clanking wheels and rails, 
and we steal away through some green loan- 
ing scarcely knowing, and not wishing to know, 
whither we are being carried ; or we march up 
into the clear mountain, where, as we breathe 
the bracing breeze of heaven, we forget that 
there is mechanism, or remember it. only to 



OF THE SUPERNATURAL. 93 

rejoice that we are above it. In like roanner, 
while we should ever acknowledge that it is a 
good thing that there is mechanical power in 
our world, and that it moves in such fixed 
grooves, and according to such measured stages, 
and while we take advantage of all this for the 
purposes of profit and gratification, and after 
wandering away from it into more inviting 
regions, we are glad to come back to it, to help 
us on our earthly way ; — yet there is something 
within us which will not allow us to rest in these 
mechanical movements of nature ; something 
which constrains us to look on physical force 
as the manifestation of the Divine power, and 
is relieved when it can look on the arrangements 
according to which it acts as made by the Divine 
skill ; and which ever allures us to rise into a 
more elevated and a purer region, whence we may 
look down on all this, and trace its studiously re- 
ticulated plan, or lose sight of all this as we gaze 
into the heavens, and behold there still more 
glorious objects looking down upon us so purely 
and benignantly from their lofty spheres, where, 
no doubt, they are not lawless, but where their 
law is justice and their operation is love. 

§ 9. ' 

The man of aesthetic taste tells us how much 
pleasure he enjoys in communion with nature. 



94 



THE NATURAL A MANIFESTATION 



And it is a good thing for us to be able to enter, 
as it were, into the feehng of God's works, to allow 
our soul to take, as the sea does when placid, 
the colour of the sky above it, — to reflect, as 
the lake does, the trees and hills on its banks : — 
to be refreshed, for example, with the freshness 
of the air of heaven, or to be enlivened by the 
purling of the stream, or to enter fully into the 
gloom of the deep woods ; to catch thoroughly 
the revival of the morning, to brace ourselves up 
to the activity of the day, to reflect from our 
spirits, like burnished windows, the glow of sun- 
set, and to sink into quiescence, like the twilight 
which succeeds, ere night comes like death to 
close the scene ; or to feel our souls bursting 
with life like the buds in spring, and melted and 
softened by the heat and beauty of summer, and 
striving after an exuberant fruitfulness like that 
of the fields in autumn, and taking the pensive 
hues of the leaves in the declining year, and 
coming under the melancholy of the falling leaf, 
and realizing the need of shelter as we look out 
on the ravings of the storm in w^inter. Bat all 
this does not rise to true fellow^ship, and w^e shall, 
in the end, be miserably disappointed if we look 
upon it as such ; the soul will ever be driven back 
upon itself in utter loneliness if it does not find 
a living agent in the midst of the scenes. That 
is the noblest beauty, which is associated with 



OF THE SUPERNATURAL. 



95 



life, — that is the highest subhmity, which is asso- 
ciated with power; dissever the two, as we do 
when we cut off God's works from God, and 
nature will appear as a branch cut off from the 
tree — ^we feel that we would soon have to cast it 
away, or as a stream cut off from its fountain — 
we feel that its moving power is gone. Though 
we may admire fine statues, we would not choose 
to be shut up in a hall of marble figures; we 
would weary even of a picture gallery, with all 
its symbolic influence and its rich suggestions, 
if we had to dwell in it for ever ; and, on a like 
principle, we would become tired of the very 
grandeur of our world, if the images of life and 
love were finally discovered to be without a 
reality. Have not all of us felt nature to be 
awfully cold and distant, as we looked upon its 
never-moving mountains, or into these depths of 
stars so pure but so little interested in us ? — we 
have felt how unbearably lonely it would be to 
dwell in a world in which there w^as nothing but 
these. The soul is not satisfied even with the 
multitude of men and women on the earth's sur- 
face, — most of us must have felt at times terribly 
solitary in a great city. We long for communion, 
but it must be a reciprocal communion, and our 
fellowship with nature is gone when we look 
upon all as dead. Those of us who see nothing 
in an idol but a dead image, can never bring our- 



96 THE NATURAL A MANIFESTATION 

selves to worship it, however beautifully it may 
be carved. We would feel our prayers coming 
back upon us with a chilling influence, like 
breath going up in warm moisture, and coming 
back in rain or snow, were we required to put up 
our petitions to the cold mountains, or the frosty 
stars ; for we know full well that they do not hear 
us, that they do not reciprocate our feelings, that 
they cannot help us. The soul does crave for 
fellowship, but it must be with a living being 
who knows what we feel, and returns the feehng ; 
and nature can help us in all this, only as its 
forms and aspects are viewed as the symbols of 
Divine life and Divine love. 

§ 10. 

Our internal position and our inward feelings 
both impress us with the idea that the natural is 
encompassed all round by the supernatural, as 
the world is by the " welkin." After all, our 
Cosmos is not the rh ^ay, though there are 
some who so represent it ; it is only to the 
whole what the earth is to the Cosmos ; like 
the earth, it is a globe, and it is in a sense 
independent, but in a higher sense it, and man 
who dwells on it, hang, or are made to stand, 
through a binding power like the gravitation 
which binds our system into one ; and influences 
are shed upon them from a higher sphere, bene- 



OF THE SUPERNATURAL. 



97 



ficent as the light of sun and of stars. The beauty 
in our visible Cosmos is merely like the sheen of 
stars in the waters of our earth, the reflection 
of the glory of a supra-mundane region. Pursue 
any one hne, starting from the earth, or the pre- 
sent, or self as a centre, and it it runs out, — with, 
space — into the infinite, — which is supernatural. 
Follow the links of causation upwards, and 
the mind insists that the chain must hang on 
the uncaused, — which is supernatural. As we 
go down from one dependency of being to 
another, the reason comes to independent sub- 
stance, — ^which is supernatural. As we go back 
into the past, the stream, as we mount it, leads 
us to a fountain which is its own original, — and 
the unoriginated is the supernatural. If we go 
out into the future, with the soul as it leaves the 
body, we are in the unending world to come, — 
which is supernatural. 

In all his deeper moods, man is made to feel 
his dependence upon, his nearness to, the super- 
natural. The hope of it cheers him in his 
temporal difficulties; and he feels he can ever 
appeal to it, as a just tribunal, from present dis- 
order and injustice. The darkness of night 
shews us objects which are concealed in the 
light of day — for it is when the glare of sunlight 
has died out that we see those stars and constel- 
lations in the height of heaven; and, in like 

G 



98 THE NATURAL A MAmFESTATION 

manner, there are high heavenly lights discerned 
by the spirit of man in the darkness of adversity, 
which may not be p.erceived in the sunshine of 
prosperity. I believe that the fear of a super- 
natural power haunts man — as his sins do — more 
or less consciously, all the time he is on earth ; 
and a judgment seat, from which he cannot 
escape, is ever seen by him standing at the close 
of life. In particular, every human being is 
made to feel himself very near the supernatural 
as he contemplates death — the death of a fellow- 
man or his own death ; — he feels that something 
is about to depart, or has departed, into the super- 
natural. Surely he who believes that something 
thus goes out from our world into another, will 
not be inclined dogmatically to affirm' that there 
may not also come something from that other 
world into this, were it only to train the young 
immortal in its mortal sphere, for its immortality 
in the sphere beyond. 

§ 11. 
This thought, hke every other profound 
thought, brings us to the profoundest thought 
in the universe — to the sin which opens like a 
fathomless gulf below, facing the brightness of 
the Divine holiness which shines from above, 
but cannot dispel the gloom beneath. He who 
does not see this is overlooking the most mys- 



OF TEE SXTPERNATTTRAL. 99 

terious fact in our world, the deepest fact in 
our nature ; it is as if a man were to visit one 
of our great cities and look only at its palaces 
and its temples, and go nowhere else than to its 
festivals and its banquets — never entering those 
lanes where poverty would hide itself, or taking 
any notice of those haunts where sinful pleasure 
revels, or of those sinks behind them, into which 
iniquity at last pours itself. Surely he who looks 
into this fearful abyss, and feels that he is being 
driven into its awful depths, may well be glad 
and grateful when told that God has interposed 
his arm to save us. , 

§ 12. 

It is in very proportion as mankind see God in 
the natural, that they are disposed to look for a 
supernatural manifestation. He who does not 
see God in his works in the world, will in no way 
be inclined to look for higher operations. He 
who contemplates exclusively the mechanical or 
instrumental portions of the universe will discover 
nothing to lead him to look for the interposition 
of a spiritual remedy to meet a spiritual evil. 
He is prepared to believe in a supernatural ap- 
pearance who thoroughly discerns God in the 
natural, and he is best prepared who looks up to 
the highest glories, and looks down into the 
deepest mysteries of the universe. He who looks 



100 TEE NATURAL A MANIFESTATION, 

on all these objects in earth and sky as the works 
of God, will easily believe that he may have other 
works. He who looks on these powers of nature 
as agents of God, will at once acknowledge that 
he may turn them to whatever uses he pleases. 
He who discovers God making provision for the 
most minute temporal wants of his creatures, 
will not be inclined to scoff at an arrangement 
which, be it mundane or supra-mundane, makes 
provision for the relief of man's spiritual wants. 
He who looks on nature as an apparatus of means 
to support moral ends, will not be indisposed, as 
these bulk largely before his view, to believe that 
God will employ every means, be it natural or be 
it supernatural, to promote these ends* He who 
looks on God as the author of all excellence, and 
as delighting above all things in moral good, and 
hating sin supremely, and who discerns sin raging 
as a fire in the fairest portions of our world, and 
who has, after looking above him, and around 
him, and within him, come to the conviction 
that, if left to itself, the fire must go on devouring 
and consuming for ever, on the materials supplied 
by the corrupt human heart, will surely rejoice to 
learn that God has interposed to extinguish the 
flames. 

We are not yet in the region of the supernatural, 
but we feel that we are on the very verge of it, 
and that it may soon appear. 



BOOK SECOND. 

THE SUPERNATUBAL IN RELATION TO THE 
NATURAL. 



CHAPTER I. 

GENERAL REMARKS ON THE SUPERNATURAL. 
SECT. I.— THE PRECISE NATURE OF THE SUPERNATURAL. 

We have seen that in this world there is a set 
of objects and agencies which constitute a sys- 
tem or Cosmos, which may have relations to 
regions beyond, but is, all the while, a self-con- 
tained sphere with a space around it — an island 
separated so far from other lands. This system 
we call ^' Nature," and the events produced by 
the agencies we call " Natural." The beings 
above this sphere, and the agents beyond it, 
though it may be acting on it, we call " Superna- 
tural." God, who created the cosmical agencies 
and set them in operation, is himself super- 
natural. When a supernatural being or power 



102 



GEXERAL REMARKS 



operates in nature, we call the work supernatural. 
THe effect is among cosmical objects, it is 
wrought in men's minds or bodies, or in physical 
nature around them. It is thus only that it can 
fall under our experience, internal or external, 
under our consciousness or under our senses. 
But the power to produce that effect, and the 
agent in whom that power resides, do not lie 
within mundane potencies, but in a region above 
and beyond. The work of creation is super- 
natural, it is a work in nature proceeding from 
a power above nature. The raising of the dead 
would, be supernatural, for there is no physical 
or physiological law capable of producing such a 
result. 

By this representation we are saved from cer- 
tain mistaken views as to both the natural and 
the supernatural. 

We see that in representing an event as na- 
tural we are not placing it out of the dominion 
of God — for we put the whole of nature under 
its Maker. A natural event is produced by 
natural causes, but these causes have been in- 
stituted by God. I believe that Deity is work- 
ing in them, as he is certainly working by them; 
We see, farther, that a new, a wonderful, a start- 
ling, an anomalous event is not, therefore, super- 
natural. The sun setting in the tropics about 
six o'clock, is not supernatural ; nor is it a 



ON THE SUFERNATTIRAL. 103 

miracle when, in the arctic regions, his Hght 
lingers on the earth for months without a night. 
Just as the sun, in his daily rising and setting, is 
not preternatural, so neither is the moon in her 
more irregular course, nor are the planets in all 
their wanderings, nor the comets in their widest 
eccentricities. The meteor flashing across the 
sky is the work of God, but it is not a super- 
natural work, nor is the awful thunder, nor the 
swift lightning, nor the pestilence as it flieth in 
darkness and visits a city to decimate its in- 
habitants. It is not a miracle when a tower 
stands, nor is it a miracle when it falls and kills 
"thirteen" persons, while otliers may escape. 
It is not supernatural, but natural, when the 
ship sails along buoyantly in the favourable 
breeze ; and it is not supernatural, but natural, 
wdien it is wrecked by a storm which arose, as 
it passed a rugged coast, and drove it upon the 
rocks. It was certainly by the appointment of 
God, but it was quite by natural agency, that 
ninety-nine persons in the ship perished, while 
one was saved ; it behoves that one to bless the 
Lord for his wonderful escape, and his gratitude 
should not be lessened when he discovers that God 
has accomplished it by a particular whirl of wind, 
raising a fortunate wave which brought a fragment 
of floating wreck to him, and drove it on to the 
shore as he clung to it in despairing agonies. 



104 GENERAL MEMABKS 

We have seen (Bk. I. chap, ii.) that in nature 
every substance is endowed with certain proper- 
ties, which act on the needful conditions being 
suppUed ; that the objects are so disposed as to 
result in general laws ; and that there is a large 
but limited body of these substances with their 
powers in nature. Let us inquire how a super- 
natural or miraculous event stands in regard to 
each of these peculiarities of the natural. 

I. In regard to the natural endowments or 
tendencies of natural objects, they are in no way 
destroyed by the supernatural action. No one 
reckons the nature or the action of a natural 
substance as annihilated when it is restrained or 
directed by other natural agents. It is the ten- 
dency of the earth's gravity to draw all bodies to 
its surface; but this quality is not extinguished, 
it is merely counteracted in the circumstances, 
when we hold a stone in our hand and keep it 
from falling. A blow is directed against us, 
which would fell us to the ground, a bystander 
interposes his staff, and we escape, and in the 
whole we have only each agent acting according 
to its nature. It is the same when a super- 
natural power interposes. It is the tendency of 
fire to burn, and this tendency it must ever 
retain, as long as the substances acting in the 
fire keep their endowments ; but this tendency 
may be counteracted by other agents, either 



ON THE SUFEBUfATUItAL. 



105 



natural or supernatural; it maybe counteracted 
by natural agents, as by water thrown upon it, 
or it may be counteracted by the immediate 
power of God, as when it was not allowed to 
consume the three children of Israel who were 
thrown into the fiery furnace in Babylon, — but 
the fire all the while retained its power, as was 
shewn by its consuming those who threw them 
in, and it was restrained by the power of God 
only, as it might have been curbed by cosmical 
powers. 

II. In regard to the general laws or obvious 
uniformities of nature, it should be allowed that 
miracles do not fall out in accordance with them. 
These general laws serve most bountiful pur- 
poses. It is because of their prevalence that 
man can so far anticipate the future, and draw 
towards him the good and ward off the evil. A 
system of things in which miracles were ever 
interfering with the established^ order or course 
of things, — so that no one could commence a 
course of action with any assurance that it would 
not be disturbed by some interposition from with- 
out, — would certainly not be suited to man, with 
his present nature and constitution. But it is 
to be observed, that even in the natural system 
there is such a disposition of agents that unex- 
pected events are ever occurring, fitted to impress 
him with his dependence on a higher power and 



106 



GENERAL REMARKS 



wisdom than his own. He who sows in spring 
will usually reap in autumn, and he who follows 
industry will commonly secure a worldly compe- 
tence ; yet the best laid plans of man will, at 
times, he so frustrated that he has little or no 
crop, and he who has been diligent in his calling, 
may, after all, be left in poverty. Often when 
our confidence was the greatest, are we made to 
say — " I returned and saw under the sun, that 
the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the 
strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet 
riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour 
to men of skill, but time and chance happeneth 
to them all." While a constant and capricious 
miraculous interference with the plan of nature 
might disturb all the principles of probability on 
which men usually act, — all such, for instance, 
as those on which insurance offices proceed, — no 
such prejudicial effects could follow from an oc- 
casional miracle which would lessen human fore- 
sight and limit human sagacity only to a small 
and unappreciable extent, beyond the restraints 
already laid on them by the cross events of pro- 
vidence. And it may be observed, of the mira- 
culous interferences of God brought before us in 
Scripture, that they are only occasional. In all 
the dispensations of God, general laws have been 
the rule, and miracles the rare exceptions — so 
rare as not to interfere with the anticipations of 



ON THE SUPERNATURAL. 



107 



human wisdom. Twice only did our Lord, when 
on earth, distribute food in a miraculous way, 
and when the people began to trust in this mode 
of procedure, he ceased to make any such provi- 
sion for them ; and his other miracles — such as 
the healing of the sick (as Dr. Chalmers has 
remarked), had no tendency to induce im- 
prudent expectations, as no one would be 
likely to bring on bodily disease in the hope 
of having it cured by the power of Jesus. The 
miraculous interpositions of God have never 
tended, in any way, to lessen men's motives 
to industry and activity. They have ever been 
so introduced into the natural, as to honour 
the natural, — I mean the sinless natural, — and 
allow it to fulfil its full intention. Not only so, 
I hope to be able to shew that they have been 
wrought upon a plan or system, analogous in 
many respects to the system of nature, and that 
in the supernatural, as in the natural, there are 
order and law, which enlarge our wisdom by 
shewing us new and more spiritual relations of 
things, which quicken our energies by the liberal 
blessings that may be obtained in the use of 
appointed means, and extend our foresight, by the 
telescopic views opened, of far distant scenes in 
the earth of the future, and in the kingdom of 
heaven. 

III. In regard to the circle of agents acting 



108 



GENERAL REMARKS 



in nature, a supernatural event is caused by an 
agent from a region beyond them. It serves its 
end because it is so.* But then it is the effect 
of a power, of the existence of which we have 
evidence in the action of nature — a power which 
is, in fact, ever operating in nature, though after 
a somewhat different mode. 

The account now given imphes, that in the 
discovery of the supernatural, there is a process 
of inference in which we rise from the effect to 
the cause. An objection, founded on this cir- 
cumstance, has been started, to the possibihty 
of proving a miracle. We ' can never, it has 



* The pantheistic Spinoza defines miracle — " Opus cujus causam na- 
turalem exemplo alterius rei solitae explicare non possumus, vel saltern 
ipse non potest, qui miraculum scribit aut narrat." — {Tract. Theol.-Pol. : 
vi. 13.) According to this view, a miracle is something which we 
cannot, or which those who narrate it cannot explain by natural law, 
but which has always a natural cause. It could easily be shewn that 
this defective view influenced the speculations of the German rational- 
ists of the end of last century and beginning of this, when they (g.e. 
Paulus) set themselves with such preposterous ingenuity to discover a 
natural explanation of the miracles of Scripture. It might also be 
shewn that this swayed Schleiermacher (who had such an admiration of 
Spinoza) when he represents miracles as being «uch merely relatively — 
that is, for those for whom they were at first done, and springing from 
Christ's deeper knowledge of the natural and connexion with it {Christl. 
Glaube) . From these German sources, similar defective \iews have come 
into our own country. Some, with the view of recommending miracles 
to the exclusive believers in nature, have talcen great pains to shew that 
they proceed from higher natural law; while others, or the same, 
represent the higher sentiments of gifted men as inspired. We shall see 
infra that this is to strip miracles of their peculiarities, and to make 
them incapable of fulfilling the end designed by them. 



ON THE SUPERNATURAL. 109 

been said, see a miracle, we can merely see an 
event which we argue to be miraculous, and the 
argument must carry us into very recondite con- 
siderations, which metaphysicians only can un- 
ravel, or perplex as they would unravel. This 
objection can seem plausible only to those who 
have contracted a senseless prejudice against 
metaphysics, and are utterly ignorant of their 
nature and their office. For every one who has 
studied the operations of the human mind knows, 
that in the case of all our convictions, except 
those which are intuitive, there is reasoning, 
and commonly reasoning from eifect to cause. 
The metaphysician has proven that we do not 
see distance — that we do not know intuitively 
the distance of the house or hill — we infer it 
from what we see. We do not see the love or 
the anger that burns in the bosom of a fellow- 
man, we conclude it from the expression of his 
countenance, from his manner, or his words. 
A body is seen lacerated on the ground, — this is 
all we perceive, — and when we declare that a 
man has been murdered, and go nn to seek out 
the guilty party, we are arguing, and arguing 
from effect to cause. Such inferences, indeed, 
are involved in the convictions which we form 
and act upon in all the ordinary affairs of 
life, and he who would refuse to accept them 
must needs go out of the world. In all such 



110 GENERAL REMARKS 

cases the process is a simple one, (indeed it is 
only the metaphysician who knows that there is 
ratiocination) ; but the inference is equally easy, 
when, from the fact given, that a man has risen 
from the grave, we conclude that a supernatural 
power has been exercised. 

It should be allowed that we are not entitled 
to look on an occurrence as supernatural unless 
we are satisfied, not only that it cannot be ex- 
plained by known law, but that it is beyond the 
power of natural agencies. We do not reckon 
the disease which has blighted the potato plant 
for so many years as miraculous, nor do we 
reckon the cholera as supernatural in its mys- 
terious visits, because science has not been able 
to detect the producing causes ; for we are con- 
fident, on the ground of induction, that the cause 
does lie among natural agencies, discoverable 
or undiscoverable. We do not allow that the 
phenomena of mesmerism are miraculous, be- 
cause we are not able at the present stage of 
physiological and psychological science to explain 
them thoroughly; we have an idea that part of 
the appearances may be ascribed to the preten- 
sion or deceit of the operators, and we are sure 
that the explanation of what is real is to be 
found in the mysterious agencies which work in 
the border territory between mind and body. 
The defender of miracles must be prepared to 



ON THE SUPERNATURAL. Ill 

accept the responsibility of shewing, not only 
that the occurrences are inexplicable, but that 
they are beyond the capacity of natural agency. 

The principle now announced enables us to 
draw sharply the distinction between the higher 
moods of the natural man and the inspiration of 
God. Every one, I should hope, has felt him- 
self carried at times into a high mental region, 
where he has breathed a purer, or at least a more 
stimulating atmosphere, and got glimpses of far 
distances. These are precious moments in the 
midst of the worldliness by which we are held 
down to the damp surface and the clay of our 
earth. There are men who have been privileged 
to rise more frequently, and to dwell more habi- 
tually in these higher regions. How expanded 
the view which opened to Plato, as he speculated 
on the relation of God, of the soul, and of the 
world ! How pure and spiritual the air in which 
the bard of Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained 
habitually breathes ! At such times — alas, how 
rare ! — but at such moments — alas, they are but 
moments ! — we feel as if we were inspired by a 
higher life ; and not unfrequently have persons 
under the influence of these high impulses been 
said to be inspired. The language is not inap- 
propriate ; it contains a great truth. These occa- 
sional uprisings of the water shew how high the 
elevation from which man has descended, and to 



112 GENERAL REMARKS 

what a height he may yet be raised. They are the 
Hngering Hght of a sun which has set, but which 
once shone upon our earth ; they are the dawn 
of a hght which may yet appear. But, after all, 
these moods are in the region of the natural, 
and not of the supernatural. As we look up to 
these heights, and as we ascend them, we may be 
tempted to think that we are mounting into the 
sky, but we are, ever and anon, made to feel that 
we are only on one of the mountains of the 
earth. We would detain these moods- — as we 
have often wished to detain the long and plea- 
sant light of summer — as we have often wished 
to prolong the glow of the evening sky — but it is 
all in vain, the light departs in spite of all our 
efforts to keep it — it fades into darkness as we 
gaze upon it. As we linger on these heights we 
are wrapt in mist and cloud before we are aware, 
and had better descend quickly to a lower and 
a safer level. If, through pride and presump- 
tion, we seek to loose ourselves altogether from 
terrestrial influences, we shall find, as we would 
mount on the wings we have formed, that the wax 
melts, and our flight ends in a fall — a fall into 
vain fancies and deceptions. How often have 
those who have thus tempted the Lord their God, 
by striving to reach a dizzy point, and by cast- 
ing themselves down thence without any promise 
of help to stay them, only fallen ignominiously 



ON THE SUPERNATURAL. 113 

amid the scoffs and jeers of men. The weak- 
ness by which even the best of such have been 
beset, and the mistakes into which they have 
fallen, shew that they have never been under the 
inspiration of a Divine and unerring wisdom. 
Still these convulsions shew what man is capa- 
ble of; the remains of man's strength, they are 
evidences of what he could do if complete health 
were-restored. They are not inspirations, except 
in a metaphorical sense, but they show the pos- 
sibility and desirableness of such an inspiration, 
should God in his grace be pleased to ^'rant it. 

But it has been urged, that upon the condition 
now laid down we can never prove a miracle, as 
it is beyond the capacity of man to tell what 
powers are in nature. You may shew us, it is 
said, a phenomenon inexplicable in our present 
state of knowledge, but this does not prove it to 
be beyond agencies of nature as yet undiscovered 
by man. We do not know, it is said, the nature 
of the sun's atmosphere, nor of the composition 
of the comets, nor of the forces which operate 
in the production of the crystalline structure of 
minerals, nor of the ether which seems to vibrate 
through all nature ; but no one supposes any one 
of these to be produced by angelic or satanic 
influence, or by the Divine power acting apart 
from a physical cause. The progress of science, 
it is urged, is ever disclosmg new powers in 

H 



114: GENEEAL REMARKS 

tiature, of which those who Hved in former times 
had no idea, or of which they caught merely im- 
perfect ghmpses. It is only in modern times 
that we have any adequate conceptions of the 
mighty influence exercised by electricity and by 
magnetism ; only of late years that we have had 
any notion of there being such varied powers in 
the sunbeam. Who can say, in these circum- 
stances, that there may not, among the yet 
undiscovered powers of nature, be agents capa- 
ble of explaining all these occurrences which we 
represent. as miraculous? "What is alleged is 
a case of the supernatural, but no testimony can 
reach to the supernatural ; testimony can apply 
only to apparent sensible facts ; testimony can 
only prove an extraordinary, and, perhaps, inex- 
plicable occurrence or phenomenon ; that it is 
due to supernatural causes is entirely dependent 
on the previous belief and assumptions of the 
parties."* 

The answer to all this is so very easy and 
obvious, that I give little credit for candour to 
those who have not seen it. It is all true that 
we do not know the extent of the powers of 
nature, but, then, there are some things of which 
we are quite certain that they are not within the 
range of natural agency. We certainly do not 
know anything like all the powers, psychological 

* Baden Powell, in "Essays and Reviews," p. 107. 



O.V THE S UPEMNA TVRAL. 115 

or physiological, which operate in man's mind or 
bodily organization, but there are some exertions 
of which we are quite sure that they are beyond 
human strength. We give full credit to the 
recorded instances of the great sagacity of New- 
ton, when he guessed at scientific truths which 
have been established only by much later investi- 
gation, but every one sees at once (what Newton 
took such delight in expounding) that the greatest 
human shrewdness — that the shrewdness of New- 
ton himself — could not foresee what the Hebrew 
prophets foretold hundreds or thousands of years 
beforehand, — a long series of events, with minute 
incidents, brought about by a varied and un- 
conscious instrumentality. We have no doubt 
of the accuracy of the accounts given of the 
wonderful capacity for acquiring a variety of 
languages possessed by certain individuals ; but 
we know full well that uneducated fishermen 
and mechanics could not at once, and without 
being taught, have addressed a multitude of per- 
sons gathered from a variety of countries, each in 
his own language. We certainly have very little 
acquaintance with the forces which operate in 
the brain and nervous systems of the lower ani- 
mals, or with the instincts which guide them ; 
but we know enough to convince us that the ass 
could not speak, except by a supernatural agency 
working in it. It might be difiicult for the most 



116 GENERAL EEMAEKS 

skilful physician to say as to certain maladies, 
whether they are or are not hkely to he cured by 
human art, hut he could have no hesitation in 
declaring as to certain organic diseases, that 
they cannot he healed on the instant, or at all, 
by natural means. There is much about the 
human body and soul which must for ever re- 
main concealed from us in this world ; but we 
know for certain that there is no power in any 
man to raise himself or his neighbour from the 
dead. 

In order to settle such questions, it is not 
needful that we should have explored all nature, 
or that we should have drawn out a list of her 
forces, and be able to specify their mode of 
operation. The most cursory observation of the 
man of ordinary sense leads him at once to the 
sound conclusion. Science, as it advances, con- 
firms the decision. Induction, as it widens, 
shews the extent of the dominion of natural 
agencies, but it shews, at the same time, that 
they all run in appointed channels, and in no 
others ; that they have all their fixed amount of 
force, and nothing more ; and the very progress 
of science, in explaining so much, enables us, 
on firmer grounds, to declare as to certain oc- 
currences, that they are altogether and certainly 
beyond natural power. Nor does this conviction 
depend, as Mr. Powell would insinuate, on the 



ON THE S UFEBNA TURAL. 117 

acquired sympathies, the inexphcable behefs, 
and unreasonable assumptions of the parties, but 
on general principles, discovered by good sense 
and common observation, and sanctioned by the 
most advanced inductive logic. 

While it should be admitted that, so far as 
the establishment of the first miracle is con- 
cerned, the burden of proving that there is a 
power beyond nature lies on the defender of the 
supernatural, it does not therefore follow, that 
the same stringent condition can be exacted in 
regard to alleged miraculous occurrences, which 
are part of a supernatural system, or which 
come in under cover of other supernatural 
events, shewn to be so by the most rigid rules 
of evidence. The most confident believers in 
natural law should be prepared to allow this. 
There are mysterious occurrences in nature, 
which we should not be entitled to declare to 
be the result of pure cosmical agency, were 
it not settled by a wide induction, that general 
law has such prevalence. The established 
uniformity thus carries over to natural law many 
individual phenomena, of which we might not 
be able to say, if we looked at them apart, 
whether they are or are not the product of mun- 
dane agencies. Surely those who claim all this, 
as I think they are entitled, on the one side, 
should be prepared to allow, on the other, that 



118 



GENERAL REMARKS 



if once it be established on strict principles of 
evidence, that one grand miracle has taken 
place, — say the resurrection of Jesus from 
the dead, — it might bring in other miracles 
connected with it on easier terms. It will be 
shewn, as we advance, that the revelation which 
God has been pleased to make of himself, in 
the Old and New Testament, is a system with 
a compact structure and organization, and con- 
nected means and end. When it is shewn that, 
as a whole, it is supernatural, it should be con- 
ceded that portions which might not, of them- 
selves, admit of being shewn to be miraculous 
by stern rules of evidence, may be logically 
regarded as being so, as carrying with them the 
sanction of the whole of which they are parts. 



SECT. II.— THE POSSIBILITY OF A MIRACLE. 

Spinoza, the father of modern pantheism, was 
the first, so far as I know, who denied the possi- 
bility of a miracle.''' He did so, oil the ground 

* Natura itaque leges et regulas, quae aeternam necessitatem et 
veritatem involvunt, quamvis omnes nobis notae non sint, semper 
tamen observat, adeoque etiam fixum atque ixnmutabilem ordinem ; 
nee ulla sana ratio suadet, natm^ae limitatam potentiam et virtutem 
tribuere, ejusque leges ad certa tantum et non ad omnia aptas, statuere. 
Nam quum virtus et potentia naturae sit ipsa Dei virtus et potentia, 
leges autem et regulae naturae ipsa Dei decreta, omnino credendum 
est, potentiam naturae infinitam esse ejusque leges adeo .latas, ut ad 



ON THE SVFERNATURAL. 



119 



that God and nature are one, that the potency 
and virtue of nature are the very Divine potency 
and virtue. This doctrine he sought to estabhsh 
by a formidable array of abstractions which he 
never compares with reahties, and by deductions 
from principles which are not self-evident, which 
are not sanctioned by reason, and some of which 
are obviously false. In the great metaphysical 
ferment which was stirred up in Germany, the 
last quarter of last century and the first quarter 
of this, a large body of the speculators were 
seized with a most extravagant admiration of the 
" thought bewildered" spectacle-grinder of Hol- 
land, and a number of them arrived at much 
the same view as he did in regard to miracles. 
In particular, J. G. Fichte, who made the whole 
external world the projection of a universal Ego 
(who can understand this ?) proceeding according 
to the self- evolving laws of the universal mind, 
comes to the conclusion that, though God could 
or should perform a miracle, it would be impos- 
sible for man to come to the knowledge of it, so 
shut up is he in the forms of his own mind.''' Ever 

omnia, quae et ab ipso divino intellectu concipiuntur, se extendant. — 
Spinoza, Tract. Theol.-Fol. : vi. 11. 

* Es kaun also die Frage gar nicht davon seyn, wie Gott eine 
iibematUrliche Wirkung in der Sinnenwelt sich also moglich denken, 
und wie er sie wirklich. machen koune ; soudern wie wir uns eine 
Erscheinung als darcli eine iibernaturliche Causalitat Gottes gewirkt 
denken konnen? &c. — Fichte, Versuch Finer KritiJc alter Offenbarimg^ § 9. 



120 



GENERAL REMARKS 



since the clays of Ficlite, there have been persons 
maintaining that a miracle, or the power on the 
part of man to discover a miracle, is an impos- 
sibility. Those holding the doctrine in this 
comitiy, have seldom announced with clearness 
the gromids on which they proceed, and we com- 
monly find them flitting from one defence to 
another, as may suit their purpose. So far as 
their arguments proceed, like those of Spinoza 
and Fichte, on pantheistic principles, they are 
to be met by those facts which undermine pan- 
theism, that is— by standing up for the trust- 
worthiness and veracity of intuitive convictions, 
which Kant, and the schools which ramified from 
him, have entirely overlooked, particularly the in- 
tuition of self-consciousness — the consciousness 
of self as a person. Only admit this intuition, 
which has, to say the least of it, as deep a place 
in our constitution as space and time, or any 
other of those forms or categories of which the 
disciples of Kant make so much, and it at once 
saves us from a waste of energy in fighting with 
the spectres which the transcendental metaphysi- 
cians have raised up, and with which speculative 
youths still amuse themselves, though I rather 
think that no one now believes in them. Take 
this deep conviction with us, and it at once shews 
us that "all" is not "one," since ^ve, ourselves, 
are persons, distinct from God on the one hand. 



ON THE SUPERNATURAL. 



12 



and the world on the other, and enables us, witix 
the aid of very obvious observation, to reach a 
personal God above nature, who, indeed, works 
in nature, but who also works independent of it. 

In our own country, David Hume, the sceptic, 
started every sort of objection to the evidence 
adduced on behalf of miracles ; but he nowhere 
denies the possibility of a miraculous occurrence. 
Mr. B. Powell everywhere charges alleged mira- 
cles with being contrary to reason, inconceivable 
by reason, and set aside by the inductive philo- 
sophy ; but he never attempts to shew how all 
this must be so, or that it is so, and instead of 
proof, he gives us reiteration after reiteration 
in very much the same phrases, which are 
nowhere explained ; and he does all this with 
a haughtiness of manner, and a dogmatism of 
tone, which may impose upon weaker minds 
which would save thought by leaning upon 
others, but which rather stirs into an attitude 
of opposition those who would part with any 
other attribute rather than their independence 
of thinking and judging. "We are entitled to 
insist, that those who reject miracles specify 
the precise grounds on which they do so. 

The impossibility of a miracle can be main- 
tained, so far as I see, on two, and only two 
grounds, worthy of being looked at ; one is the 
ground of intuition or intuitive reason, and the 



!2 



GENERAL REMABKS 



ber the ground of an enlarged experience 
gathered to a point by induction. Let us ex- 
amine each of these separately : 

1. It is conceivable that a miracle may be 
contrary to intuitive reason. I freely admit that 
there are truths which the mind sees at once, 
and by intuition. If a miracle were contrary 
to this immediate vision of the soul, or the prin- 
ciple on which it proceeds, it would certainly be 
impossible to establish it to our minds ; for the 
proof, however strong, could not have greater 
force than the original principle which it would 
set aside. But there is no intuitive perception, 
no fundamental law, no constitutional principle 
of the mind contradicted by a miracle. 

I believe that there is a principle in our mind 
which leads us, on discovering an effect, to look 
for a cause. If a m.iracle were contrary to this 
law, it would be impossible to establish it. Biit 
it has been shewn, again and again, that a super- 
natural occurrence is not inconsistent with the 
mental law of causation.* Our intuitive convic- 
tion does not require us to seek for a material or 
mental cause to every effect, it is equally satis- 
fied when it meets with an adequate mental 

* As by Thomas Brown— (" Ow Cause and Efect"— Note ^.)— A 
miracle is " an effect that indicates a Power of a higher order than the 
powers which we are accustomed directly to trace in phenomena more 
familiar to us, hut a Power whose continued and ever present existence 
it is atheism only that denies." 



ON THE SUPERNATURAL. 



123 



cause. I seek for a cause of the movement of 
my arm, which a moment ago was still, but is 
now lifted up, and I am contented when I can 
refer it to my volition that the arm should be 
moved. I see traces of design in the construc- 
tion of that house or temple, and I must seek 
for a cause, but the mind feels that it has 
enough when it can ascribe it to the intelligence 
and taste of an architect. Nor does the prin- 
ciple of causation insist that every effect in 
nature must have a cause in nature ; it is quite 
satisfied, when it cannot find a cause in nature, 
to discover it in an agent beyond nature. Thus 
it is that, not finding in nature a cause of the 
design in nature, we refer it to a supernatural 
intelligence. A supernatural event is not an 
effect without a cause, it is merely an effect 
without a cause in the agencies working in that 
system which we call nature. The intuitive 
principle has an important part to act in the 
process of reaching the supernatural power in 
the miracle — a part very much the same as that 
which it has to perform in rising from nature 
to "God, as the author of nature. Not being able 
to discover a cause among natural agencies, the , 
mental principle insists on a supernati^al cause, 
and rejoices to recognize it in Him to whom all 
inquiry into causes ever conducts us, and in 
whom all power resides. 



124 GENERAL REMARKS 

But here it will be necessary to distinguish 
between two things which have often been con- 
founded : — between the principle of cause and 
effect, and the principle of the uniformity of 
nature. The principle of causation insists, that 
every effect has a cause. I look upon this as an 
intuitive principle. It can stand the tests of in- 
tuition. It is self-evident ; the mind, on the bare 
contemplation of an effect, discovers that it im- 
plies a cause. It is necessary ; no man can be 
made to believe otherwise. It is catholic br uni- 
versal ; every one on discovering an effect looks 
for a cause. It is an internal principle, looking to 
and guaranteeing a corresponding external reality. 
To this law there are no exceptions ; . to this law, 
I believe, there can be no exceptions. It holds 
good in nature; it holds good beyond nature. 
Every .thing that begins to be, must have a power 
producing it. It is thus we argue, that the world, 
as a structure produced and arranged, must have 
had a producing and arranging cause. 

Of quite a different character is the principle 
which leads us to believe in the uniformity of 
nature.* We have seen (Bk. L, chap, iii.) that 

* It is one of tlie gravest defects of a work of great excellence, but 
of very grave defects — I mean the "Logic" of Mr. J. S. Mill — that 
the author confounds, all throughout his Chapter on Induction, our 
"belief in Causation, with our belief in the Uniformity of Nature. I 
have commented on that confusion elsewhere. — Intuitions of the Ifind, 
pp. 275—278. 



ON THE SUPERNATURAL. 



125 



it cannot stand the tests of intuition : — it is not 
self-evident ; it is not necessary ; it is not uni- 
versal. It is discovered, not by an immediate 
perception of the mind, but by a large and a long 
experience ; the experience of ourselves and 
others over an extensive range of facts. It de- 
clares, not that every effect has a cause, but that 
thecommpn mundane occurrences have a cause 
in the agents at work in the mundane system. 
It declares that fire left to itself will burn, but it 
does not say that fire may not be counteracted by 
a higher and a Divine agency. It says that, con- 
signed to the processes in nature, man's body 
will die, but it is not entitled to affirm that man 
may not be brought to life again by supernatural 
potency. For scientific purposes, and in the way 
of widening our idea of the order of the universe, 
it is a HU)st influential law. But to this law, it is 
quite conceivable, there may be exceptions, — to 
this law I believe there are exceptions. It is by 
observation and induction that we have discovered 
the law ; it is by them, and by them exclusively, 
that we discover the extent and the limits of the 
law. This brings us to consider the other 
ground on which a miracle may be rejected. 

2. It is conceivable that a miracle may be 
contrary to experience. The first objection is 
commonly urged by metaphysicians, most com- 
monly by those who have been caught in the 



126 GENERAL RE 31 ARKS 

toils of pantheism. This second is more hkely 
to be advanced by physicists, who have fixed their 
attention so exclusively on the system of natural 
causes — mechanical, chemical, and vital — that 
they can see nothing else. 

What is it that the inductive philosophy has 
actually established ? It has shewn that there 
is a set of agencies working in nature, and that 
there is uniformity in their operations. All 
this has been discovered by a very wide induc- 
tion, wider than we have in favour of any indivi- 
dual law in any one department of science ; and I 
rejoice to go as far in this direction as the most 
advanced inductive philosophers possibly can. 
But when, not content with affirming, they make 
strong denials, I draw back, and I put myself 
on the defensive. I agree with them, without 
reserve, when they say that there are agencies 
working in a system ; I dispute with them when 
they declare that there can be nothing else, and 
I press them for their proof. If they appeal to 
reason or intuition, I meet them in the way I 
have done, and shew that, while every occurrence 
has a cause, this does not require that it must 
have a physical or mundane cause. If they 
appeal to experience, then on the field of ex- 
perience I meet them. 

And I tell them, at the outset, that it is not 
possible, in the nature of things, that they should 



ON THE SUPERNATURAL. 127 

be able to establish the doctrine of the uni- 
formity of nature as a law which can admit of 
no exceptions. No general maxim can be shewai 
to be necessary by experience — by experience 
which must necessarily be limited. In ten 
thousand million of occurrences on earth we 
have found nothing but natural agencies ; — this 
will never entitle us, by any logical rule, to de- 
clare, dogmatically, that in no other occurrence 
can there be supernatural agency. In a court of 
law, the testimony of a thousand witnesses, that 
they did not see a particular individual commit 
a murder, cannot set aside the testimony of two 
credible witnesses, that they saw the deed done. 
On a like principle, the fact, that in common 
terrestrial affairs there is only natural agency, can 
never authorize us to set aside at once, and with- 
out examination, every case of alleged superna- 
tural interference. Our appeal being to experi- 
ence, we must be prepared to abide by the result 
of experience. If there be a prima facie case of 
-Supernatural action, it is, at least, worthy of our 
examination, and if it relates to some important 
matter in which God our Maker seems to be 
making intimation of his will, it demands our 
careful and candid attention. If the evidence 
advanced in its behalf be gt)od, standing the 
usual tests of testimony and historical evidence, 
w^e ought to yield our assent, which we are in no 



128 



GENERAL REMARKS 



way entitled to withhold on the ground of some 
general principle of the uniformity of nature, — 
a principle derived solely from experience, and 
which we must submit to be limited by ex- 
perience. 

And here it will be needful to refer to the 
wretched sophism which has been advanced, 
about its being unreasonable or impossible to 
suppose that God should work miracles, as this 
would be inconsistent with his unchanging pur- 
poses. His will, they say, is expressed in his 
works, and any action of a different kind would 
shew that God is changeable, and that his works 
in nature are not perfect, and not worthy of 
him. It requires very little penetration to 
discover the quiet assumptions on whi-ch this 
reasoning is founded. It assumes, that because 
nature is an expression of God's will, there can 
be no other expression. It assumes, that be- 
cause God acts after a particular mode, no 
doubt for wise reasons in the circumstances, 
he can never have reasons for acting after a 
different manner in other circumstances. It 
assumes that an addition is an inconsistency ; 
that to superinduce anything farther upon some- 
thing previously existing is to declare that which 
thus existed to have been wrong or bad. It 
argues no inconsistency in the Divine plans, 
that there was first a long period in which there 



ON THE SUPERNATURAL. 129 

were only plants and the lower animals on the 
earth's surface, and that afterwards God placed 
man on our globe ; on the contrary, distin- 
guished naturalists have argued, from the very 
animal forms which appeared in the early ages, 
that it must have been the purpose of God the 
Creator from the beginning, to introduce upon 
the scene a being bringing out more fully the 
capacities of the type. It has been shewn, in 
last Book, that the natural seems to look for the 
supernatural. It will be shewn, in what is to 
follow in this Book, that the supernatural fits in 
most admirably into the natural system, and 
that the two form the joined and adjusted com- 
partments of one grand temple, designed from 
all eternity in the counsels of God, and now 
being reared in time, — the one being as it were 
the outer, and the other the inner apartment. 
" For there is a tabernacle made ; the first, 
wherein " are natural gifts " the candlestick, 
the table, and the shewbread, which is called 
the sanctuary; and after the second vail, the 
tabernacle, which is called the holiest of all," 
wherein are yet higher gifts, and an immediate 
revelation from God, " which had the golden 
censer, and the ark of the covenant overlaid 
round about with gold, wherein was the golden 
pot that had manna, and Aaron's rod that 
budded, and the tables of the covenant, and 

I 



130 



GENERAL EEMAEK8 



over it the cherubims of glory shadowing the 
mercy- seat." 

We are now in circumstances to examine the 
statements of Mr. Powell, in the " Essays and 
Reviews." He is everywhere referring to the 
" fixed laws of belief, and our convictions of 
established order and analogy " (p. 106) ; but he 
gives no explanation as to what he precisely" 
means. The following is the most specific 
language which we can find in his writings, and 
it is sufficiently vague : — " The entire range of 
the inductive philosophy is at once based upon, 
and in every instance tends to confirm, by an 
immense accumulation of evidence, the grand 
truth of the universal order and constancy of 
natural laws, as a primary law of belief so strongly 
entertained and fixed in the mind of every truly 
inductive inquirer that he cannot even conceive 
the possibility of its failure" (pp. 108, 109). 
Again, " the enlarged critical and inductive 
study of the natural world cannot but tend 
powerfully to evince the inconceivableness of 
imagined interruptions of natural order or 
supposed suspensions of the laws of nature " 
(p. 110). He adds, miracles are "seen to be 
inconceivable to reason" (p. 126).* I have 
searched through all his voluminous discussions 
as to the order of nature, without finding any- 

* I quote from the Fifth Edition of " Essays and Eeyiews." 



ON THE SVPERNATURAL. 131 

thing more definite than the above. But, from 
such language, we cannot find on what grounds 
he would have us reject miracles thus summarily, 
and without inquiry into the evidence by which 
they are supported. Some of his expressions 
seem to mean that he would dismiss them at 
once, on the ground of some internal principle 
called " reason," or a " primary law of belief." 
Other expressions would rather imply, that he 
would have us set them aside on the ground 
of some law reached by observation and induc- 
tion — " by an enlarged critical and inductive 
study of the natural world." The impression 
left is, that we are justified in discarding the 
supernatural on both grounds; the inductive 
philosophy is represented as " based upon " 
a primary law of belief, and it '' confirms it." 
But we cannot submit to be deceived by such a 
tliaumatwpe fallacy, in which the author appeals 
to fact when driven from reason, and goes back 
to intuition, or reason, when it is shewn that ex- 
perience cannot cover his position. Nor can we 
allow him to take advantage, as he seems in- 
chned, of both collectively, till he has explained 
and vindicated each separately. If his appeal 
be to reason — meaning intuitive reason, or 
fundamental laws of behef — then I meet his 
dogmatic assertion by a dogmatic denial. There 
is no primary law of the human mind which au- 



132 GENERAL REMARKS 

thorises us to reject a miracle without looking at 
its evidence. He tells us that miracles are " seen 
to he inconceivable by reason." If he means 
that we cannot have an idea of a miracle, that 
we cannot conceive it, in the sense of picturing 
or representing it to the mind, the statement is 
simply false, for we can easily form the idea or 
notion of an event in nature — say a person 
rising from the dead — with a cause beyond 
nature. If he means, by a miracle being incon- 
ceivable by the reason, that we cannot judge it or 
believe it to be true, I maintain, in opposition, 
that there is no intuitive law of belief which is 
inconsistent with a miracle ; and reason com- 
mands us, in matters of experience, to be guided 
by observational evidence, and not by a priori 
principles. If, on the other hand, the principle 
to which he appeals is supposed to be the result 
of experience, then I maintain that experience 
can sanction no such wide negative law, and 
that the evidence of experience is in favour of 
the occurrence of certain miraculous events 
bearing testimony to a most momentous revela- 
tion from heaven. 



ON THE STTFERNATURAL. 133 



SECT. III.-PURPOSES SERVED BY THE SUPERNATURAL. 

We advance a step farther in our discussions 
in this section, but it is only a single step. We 
are to inquire what purposes may be conceivably 
served by the supernatural ; but we are not, at 
this place, to endeavour to prove systematically 
that these ends are actually accomplished. This 
may be done more effectively, after we have 
looked in a more particular manner at the cha- 
racter of the supernatural revelation. But, first, 
it will be proper to shew that there are certain 
ends which do not require supernatural agency 
to produce them, inasmuch as they may be se- 
cured by the natural. 

1 . It is not needful that a miracle be wrought 
— say that one should rise from the dead — to 
convince us that there is a God. For all this is 
very evident from the frame of the world, and 
is pressed upon us by deep internal convictions. 
Some have maintained that the existence of God 
might be .proven by the miracles recorded in the 
Scriptures. These, it is said, have come down to 
us as well- attested facts, which, in their character 
and mode of operation, argue a power above the 
mechanism of nature. I am not inclined to go so 
far as to affirm that there is no force whatever in 
this line of argument. I believe that the truths 



134 



GENEBAL MEMAEKS 



revealed in Scripture are so self- evidencing, 
and that the great facts of the New Testa- 
ment are so well attested, that they are fitted 
to impress us with the conviction that there is 
a living power ahove the dead universe. It is a 
matter of fact, that it is mainly by means of the 
Bible and its supernatural truths, that the idea 
of God is first suggested to those who have been 
brought up in a Christian land. I am also fully 
persuaded that to most miods the revelation of 
God in his Word is a means of strengthening 
and rendering more real the conviction which 
may be gathered from his works. Still, it is 
ever to be resolutely maintained, that " the in- 
visible things of God, from the creation of the 
world, are clearly seen, being understood from 
the things that are made — even his eternal power 
and Godhead." The Bible everywhere assumes 
that there is a God ; it presupposes that men 
believe in God, and it comes as the Word of 
that God. The Christian apologist who acts 
wisely should proceed on a previous demonstra- 
tion of the Divine existence, or rather upon 
man's conviction that there is a supernatural 
Being, and bring in that Being as the cause of 
the miracles which are recorded in the volume 
of inspiration. 

2. W^e do not require miraculous operations 
to bring about the ordinary events of God's pro- 



ON TEE S VFEENA TTJEAL. 135 

vidence ; to procure a supply to our bodily wants ; 
to secure us from danger, when God so means 
it ; to visit us with affliction, when the Divine 
faithfulness knows that we require it ; and to 
help on individuals and the race in the onward 
march of intelligence and civilization. A pro- 
vision has been made for all these in the plan 
of nature, in w^hich God has general laws, to 
which mankind can accommodate themselves, 
and fittings of one agent and law to another, 
whereby he accomplishes each of his special 
ends. In this economy, everything has been 
arranged from the beginning, with such wis- 
dom and foresight, that it does not need to be 
amended. God gives no encouragement, either 
in his Word or in his Works, to those who ex- 
pect him to work miracles to. save them from the 
consequences of their own folly, or to help a 
cause which may be carried by human zeal and 
energy, aided by such predispositions as God 
may have made in his natural providence. 

But when all this is allowed, it does not go 
to prove that the supernatural is unnecessary. 
Man, indeed, must ever be careful not to go 
beyond his proper province, in making affirma- 
tions regarding what God may do or must do. 
Some defenders of Christianity speak of the " ne- 
cessity" of a Divine Eevelation. The language 
is strong, as coming from a creature like man, 



136 



GENERAL REMARKS 



whose capacities are so restricted and oppor- 
tunities of knowing the possible ways of God are 
so confined. But while it should ever be far 
from us to dictate to Deity, we may carefully 
look at the state of things in which we find 
ourselves placed, and at the relation in which 
we stand towards God, and reverently observe 
how certain great purposes worthy of God, suited 
to our world, and bearing upon the crying wants 
of man, might be served by a supernatural ac- 
tion or revelation, should God be pleased to 
grant it. Enough, at least, may be discovered 
to obviate those objections which proceed on 
the allegation that the added supernatural must 
be incongruous with the previous natural, and 
be a reflection on the consistency of God. It 
will appear that the supernatural fits into the 
natural, and carries out fully the Divine purpose, 
as manifested in the world. 

I. The principal ground on which we antici- 
pate a supernatural interposition of God is, un- 
doubtedly, the existence and universality of sin. 
We have here a fact in nature to proceed upon, 
and we feel constrained to trace its relation to 
God and to his character, as revealed by nature 
without and nature within us. It is quite cer- 
tain, on the one hand, that sin exists; equally 
certain, on the other hand, that it is a violation of 
the law of God, and offensive to Him who hath 



ON TEE STTPERNATrRAL. 137 

instituted it. We are sure that God condemns 
sin, and yet we have strong hopes that, somehow 
or other, he may provide forgiveness for the 
guilty. Nature shews that God is good, but 
fails to point out a way by which the sinner may 
be reconciled to that good God. It is at this 
point that the revealed fact of the Word comes 
in to meet the mysterious fact of nature. The 
incarnation of the Eternal Word, followed by the 
setting of a perfect example, by the working of a 
perfect righteousness, and by piacular suffering 
and death, is the great supernatural event, carry- 
ing all the others along with it, as the streams 
which feed it, or the rivers which flow from it ; 
as its antecedents, or its consequents ; as means 
towards it, or issues from it. Admit this grand 
occurrence, and we feel that we may admit a 
thousand more, provided they stand in a relation 
to it. We have now a new and a grander central 
sun than that of our natural mundane system, 
and we have no difficulty in conceiving that 
there may be many bodies rolling round it, as 
secondaries or dependencies. 

II. Another ground on which we may be led 
to anticipate the Divine interposition is to be 
found in man's distance from God, and igno- 
rance of him, coupled always with the desirable- 
ness of knowing God-, and his willingness to be 
known. The circumstance now referred to pro- 



138 



GENERAL BEMABKS 



ceeds from the other, but it comes to us with a 
pecuhar aspect. We discover two classes of 
facts in nature, which seem to imply a third class 
above nature, in order to reconcile them. These 
natural facts meet us, whether we look to the 
world at large or to our own individual re- 
ligious experience. 

Looking to mankind at large, we find, on the 
one hand, as Paul told the men at Lystra, that 
God " has not left himself without a witness in 
that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven 
and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food 
and gladness" (Acts xiv. 17), and on the other 
hand, that men have not attended to that wit- 
ness, or have not understood it aright. The 
heavens declare the glory of God ; but how few 
of those who have dwelt or do dwell on the earth 
have looked up to the heavens, and risen thereby 
to clear apprehensions of his nature and perfec- 
tions. God does reveal hipiself in these his 
w^orks, and yet does it not look as if he were 
concealing himself behind them ? How few of 
his intelligent creatures have recognized him, or 
have worshipped him, except in the most horrid 
and tortured shapes, which are a caricature of 
his excellencies and a mockery of his greatness, 
in which his purity is omitted, and his good- 
ness turned into favoritism and caprice, and his 
spiritual nature reduced to sensuous forms ! It 



ON THE SUPERNATURAL. 



139 



has again and again been shewn, till it has be- 
come commonplace — and men who hate com- 
monplace turn from it — but it is an established 
truth which no one can deny, and the impor- 
tance of w^hich cannot be over-estimated, that 
no nation of itself has (and very few individuals 
have) risen to the knowledge of one God apart 
from a wTitten revelation. This induction is as 
wide as any in physical science, embracing not 
only ancient but modern times, not only bar- 
barous and degraded countries, but semi-civilized 
countries of vast magnitude, such as India and 
China, and highly civilized countries, such as 
ancient Greece, and countries capable of the high- 
est political organization, such as ancient Eome. 
All history, too, testifies, from Greece downwards 
to modern Japan, that the picture drawn in the 
close of the first chapter of the Epistle to the 
Komans is a true one ; that when men " knew 
not God, and glorified him not as God, neither 
were thankful," they have everywhere been given 
up to uncleanness and other sins, such as murder, 
deceit, malignity, practised without public repro- ' 
bation, or an effort being made to stay the evil — 
inasmuch as men not only " do the same, but 
have pleasure in them that do them." On the 
other hand, it is clear that God wishes that he 
should be known; and, as Paul taught the 
Athenians, that men " should seek the Lord, if 



140 GENERAL REMARKS 

haply they might feel after him, and find him, 
though he be not far from every one of us" 
(Acts xvii. 27) : and it is certain that the know- 
ledge of God is a higher knowledge in itself than 
the knowledge of his works, or than any other 
knowledge can be ; and that it has an elevating 
tendency upon the thoughts, and a purifying 
influence upon the morals of a people ; while it 
brings to all, but especially those in affliction, a- 
thousand comfortable assurances. Is any man 
justified in dogmatically affirming that this God 
never has made, and that he never can make, a 
fuller and a comforting revelation of himself to his 
intelligent and anxious creatures everywhere seek- 
ing him — as they shew by their very errors, and 
yet ever feeling that they have not found him — 
as they shew by their dissatisfaction and restless- 
ness? The human spirit seems to anticipate 
that, though God has " winked " at " this time 
of ignorance," yet he will, at the set time, break 
the silence, and " command all men everywhere 
to repent" (Acts xvii. 27, 30) in order to a 
• restoration to himself. I believe that he who 
has reflected deeply upon nature and all its 
mysteries, and upon the actual state of mankind 
and their relation to God, will be the most dis- 
posed to consider and to weigh the facts and 
arguments which might be advanced to shew 
that God has been pleased to make known a 



ON THE SUPERNATUBAL. 141 

way of access to him. He who perceives that it 
has been by the Bible that God's unity and his 
higher perfections have in fact been made known 
to that portion of the human family which know 
and recognise these truths, will surely not be 
disposed a priori and peremptorily to decide that 
the book cannot possibly have come from God. 
Nor let any one urge that the light at present dif- 
fused over the professedly Christian world would 
remain on our earth even though the Bible 
were withdrawn as a heavenly luminary. From 
all that history teaches regarding mankind we 
may be sure that in such a case the light at pre- 
sent diffused, like the sun's beams through our 
atmosphere, so that many fail to recognise the 
luminous centre from which it proceeds, would 
soon lessen, and would finally disappear, among 
the great body of the people, were the Bible, as 
the source, withdrawn, — just as the day, after a 
brief splendour, sinks into twilight and darkness 
when the sun ceases to shine. Yes ; let us realize 
— it may be profitable for us — the position of our 
world were the Bible found by German critics or 
Oxford essayists to be so full of errors that no 
one could discover from it what was truth and 
what was error. What would the great body of 
the people in these lands now have to fall back 
upon? What would we now have to carry 
with us when we addressed the heathen or the 



142 



GENERAL REMARKS 



outcast? Would not the great mass of man- 
kind feel licensed to abandon themselves to 
shameless ungodliness and sensuality, from 
which they would be roused only, by occasional 
religious awakenings, to feel that they were 
groping in darkness, in which they would find 
gods or demons, suited to their tastes or created 
by their fears, among imperfectly discerned 
natural objects? I believe that the very edu- 
cated, when the darkness had settled down, 
would feel God disappearing more and more 
from the view, and becoming, in fact, an un- 
known God — at best a mere point of light — 
" a postulate of reason," as some one admits him 
— seen in the incalculable distance, not as a sun 
shining all around, but as a star exercising no 
appreciable influence on our earth. 

The very same impression is left when, in- 
stead of looking at the world without, we listen 
to the breathings of our own spirits. In our 
deeper moods we feel as if these souls of ours 
had some affinity with God, and yet it is in our 
moments of deepest thought and emotion that we 
are made to feel most impressively that he is at 
an infinite distance from us. Many a profound 
thinker has felt, as Heraclitus of Ephesus did, 
when he describes the name of Zeus as " the one 
object of wisdom," which "wills not and yet 

wills to be spoken" [Xeysc^ai o-jk lOeXsi %ai sdsXsi). He 



ON THE SUPERNATUBAL. 143 

seems as if He were offering us communion 
with himself, and yet we are ever baffled and 
beat back in our efforts to enjoy the privilege. 
We are ever induced to mount, but as we do so 
by natural means, we find that, after all, there is 
no atmosphere to float us beyond a very short 
height, and that we never get beyond the gravity 
of earth, which, in the end, draws us back to its 
hard and cold surface. There are times when 
our spirits, as if at the invitation of God, would 
boldly go up to heaven's gates only to find them 
shut and silent, and we come back sulky and 
disappointed. How often have we felt our 
prayers ascending as vapours, drawn up by a 
genial heat as we think in the heavens, only 
to return as snow to damp and cool, or as hail 
to smite us. All these natural facts and intima- 
tions combined seem to shew that God is dis- 
pleased with us, while yet he loves us; not 
countenancing us in our sins, and yet sparing 
us in the midst of them ; shewing his disapproval 
of our conduct, but yet waiting to be gracious 
and showering favours upon us in order to melt 
us into gratitude. Could any man, living in a 
heathen land, be giving offence to that God, 
were he to pray that He would reveal Himself 
more fully, and shew the way by which the sin- 
ner may approach him ? 

But if God is to provide a reconcilement of 



144 



GENERAL REMARKS 



these chasms, that reconcilement must be pre- 
ternatural, and if he is to reveal this method 
of reconciliation, it must be in a supernatural 
way, — the revelation itself is supernatural, it is 
a voice out of and beyond the natural sphere. 
To preclude God from supernatural action, is to 
shut him out from providing a remedy for the 
evils which sin has entailed. To make it im- 
possible to prove the supernatural, is to shut out 
man from ever knowing that there is forgiveness 
and peace. But if God is to reveal his will it 
must be in a way intelligible to man, and the 
intelligent nature of man requires that there be 
evidence that it is God that speaks. 

III. God may prove to us a supernatural 
revelation by miracles of evidence wrought on 
natural agents, but by an action beyond the 
sphere of nature. For if God is to reveal the 
supernatural to us, say that his Eternal Son 
became flesh and made reconciliation, it must 
be through the natural. In saying so, I do not 
speak of any absolute necessity in the nature of 
things, but of a necessity arising from the nature 
of man, and of the mundane system in which he 
is placed. A revelation to man is a revelation 
to a being within the sphere of nature. Not 
only so, but that revelation must be made by 
means which can reach him. It must be made 
immediately to his soul by intimations to it, or 



ON THE SUPERNATURAL. 145 

it must be made externally through his bodily 
senses. I suppose that to the inspired prophets 
the revelation was made by a mental represen- 
tation,, accompanied by a conviction very analo- 
gous to the intuitive conviction which makes us 
trust our senses or our memory, that is, a con- 
viction carrying in itself its own evidence and 
validity. Such a persuasion must come to every 
individual expected to be swayed by it. It is 
quite conceivable that God might thus super- 
naturally work a conviction in the breast of 
every man. He has, I believe, imprinted cer- 
tain natural beliefs on the souls of all men, 
such as that every change implies a cause, and 
that sin deserves punishment. It is quite con- 
ceivable that God might add to these native 
ones another, whereby we should be led to be- 
lieve at once in the doctrine of the Trinity, 
Such a conviction would, in its very nature, be 
necessary and irresistible, it would leave no room 
for free will either in a good or bad exercise, 
no room either for choice or rejection. But 
it is not thus that God reveals to us the great 
practical doctrines and duties of religion and 
morality. Instead of driving us irresistibly by 
instinct, he leads us by mediate evidence, which 
we are expected to receive, but which we may 
also reject. But it is no evidence to me of 
Jesus being a Divine teacher, that he was so 



146 



GENERAL REMARKS 



esteeraed by a person named Paul or John, who 
hved eighteen centuries ago. If evidence is to 
be furnished to mankind generally, it may be 
best addressed to the senses. And how can 
man be so effectually convinced that God is 
acting or that God is speaking, as by witness- 
ing acts wrought in nature above all natural 
power, wrought by the Being who at first pro- 
duced nature, and who can change it as it 
pleases him. The miracles of Scripture are all 
wrought in nature, — the effects are in natural 
agents, and become thus cognizable by man ; 
but the cause must be in a power beyond any 
natural cause. 

This is the proper place for a statement as to 
the phrases employed in such discussions. As a 
matter of propriety and convenience, we may 
speak of whatever is supposed to be beyond the 
natural, as " preternatural." The phrase will 
apply not only to the Divine action, but to the 
agency of such beings as ghosts and demons, — 
to all such operations as witchcraft and necro- 
mancy. We may reserve the phrase " super- 
natural" to the Supreme Being, and to the works 
performed by him, and to the objects created by 
him beyond the natural sphere, such as angels 
and the world to come. We would confine the 
word " miracle " to those events which were 
wrought in our world as a sign or proof of God 



ON TEE STJFEENATURAL. 147 

making a supernatural interposition or a revela- 
tion to man. We must ever view creation as 
supernatural, but we do not speak of it as 
miraculous. We look upon the incarnation of 
the Son of God as supernatural, we do not 
employ it as a sign or wonder for evidence. 
We believe the conversion of the sinner to tran- 
scend all the natural efforts of the corrupt heart 
of man, but we do not advance it as a miracle 
for proof, though it may carry strong conviction 
to the man himself, and produce an impression 
and a prepossession on those who were cognizant 
of the former man, and now mark the change 
wrought upon him. We would confine the 
phrase miraculous to those signs, wonders, and 
miracles which were wrought by Moses and the 
prophets, by Jesus and the Apostles, to summon 
the attention of spectators, and to gain their 
reasonable conviction as to the Divine origin 
of the message proclaimed, and the system of 
religious doctrine set forth. 

IV. It is conceivable that the supernatural 
in our world may be the means of bringing it 
into harmonious connexion with other portions 
of the universe. Though no wise man will ever 
attempt a scientific demonstration of it by the 
light of nature, yet the deepest thinkers, looking 
to the infinitude of space and the greatness of 
God, have been prone to believe that God has 



148 GENERAL EEMARKS 

other systems beyond ours, created in the ful- 
ness of his wisdom and his love. We can never, 
indeed, know anything positive of these other 
worlds ; they lie in the dim and distant horizon 
of our vision, and we cannot say whether it is 
floating vapour or solid land that we see. When 
we are in this state of perplexity the Scriptures 
of the Old and New Testament come to us 
as the Word of God, and proclaim that beyond 
the region visible by man, there are " thrones, 
and dominions, and principalities, and powers." 
They also inform us that beings in these other 
worlds take an interest in the supernatural events 
which have been transacted on our earth, — 
" which things the angels desire to look into " 
(1 Pet. i. 12); and that the work of the Mediator, 
in bringing God and man into reconcilement, 
also brings our w^orld, and the sinful inhabitants 
of it, into unison with other worlds and the 
beings who people them : " For it pleased the 
Father that in him should all fulness dwell, and 
having made peace by the blood of his cross, by 
him to reconcile all things unto himself; by 
him, I say, whether they be things in earth or 
things in heaven" (Col. i. 19, 20). These are 
pleasant glimpses, opened to us through the 
loopholes of our present place of confinement, 
of scenes in which we may expatiate when the 
earthly house of our tabernacle is dissolved. 



ON TEE STIPEENATUEAL. 



149 



V. Altogether, the supernatural may be con- 
sidered as the complement of the natural, or the 
carrying out to its proper conclusion of what is 
involved in the present system of things. It is 
certain that the natural system is the effect of a 
prior supernatural action ; and it seems to point 
on to some supernatural consummation. I sup- 
pose we could not appropriately lepresent the 
existence of the soul in the world to come as 
natural; but the everlasting life is implied in 
the temporal life, as the flower is in the bud. It 
would be an inaccurate use of language to speak 
of the resurrection of the body as natural, but 
the resurrection is certainly quite in conso- 
nance with the high natural endowments of 
man. That reproaches of conscience should 
pursue the commission of sin on earth, is an 
arrangement of God's natural providence which 
points to a more fearful retribution in a future 
life. It is the same with most of the super- 
natural manifestations of God brought under 
our view in the Word; they are the realiza- 
tion of what'is implied in the system of nature, 
being the fulfilment of a plan, or the supply 
for an obvious want, or the completion of what 
had been commenced.* 

* This may be the proper place for referring to the discussions 
which have taken place, as to -whether miracles are against nature, or 
violations of the laws of nature, and as to whether they may not he 



150 GENERAL BEMAMKS 



SECT. IV.— RELATION OE THE SUPERNATURAL TO THE 
NATURAL. 

In the Scriptures the distinction between 
the natural and supernatural is implied and 
proceeded on, but is not drawn abstractly or 
theoretically. The precise scientific difference 
between the two cannot be discerned till research 

conformed to a higher nature. The controversies on these topics have 
generally been distinguished by much confusion. A miracle may be 
said to be against or not against nature, according as we understand 
" against.'" They are against nature as they counteract natural action, 
—just as one natural agent may be against another — as water may 
counteract fire ; but they are not against nature in the sense of being 
in opposition to the design of nature as a work of God. They are 
violations of the laws of nature, inasmuch as they arrest what would 
take place according to natural agencies ; but, after all, they only enable 
nature, as a work of God, to carry out its full design. " The miracle is 
not unnatural,'^ says Dr. Trench, " nor can it be ; since the unnatural, the 
contrary to order,' is of itself the ungodly, and can in no way, therefore, 
be afiirmed of a Divine work." — {Notes on the Miracles of our Lord, 
chap, ii.) The statement is prettily worded, and has a truth in it. 
But it contains an amphiboly in regard to the meaning of the word 
*' natural." By nature, in the proper use of the term, we mean the 
system of things in the Cosmos ; and certainly a miracle is non-natural, 
that is, not from the natural, though it is not therefore " unholy," as it 
proceeds from a holy sphere beyond. The unnatural is " unholy" in a 
different sense, as meaning something inconsistent with the plan of God 
in nature. The truth of the statement lies in this, that miracles are in 
complete harmony with the design of God in the works of creation. 
But a statement to the effect that they are natural would be altogether 
wrong; as the "natural" properly means that which is produced by 
cosmical agencies ; and such language is apt to leave the impression 
that miracles might be explained by some higher material or mental 
causes. 



OK TEE STTPERNA TVRAL. 151 

has made such progress as to convince men that 
nature is a self-contained system. If the in- 
spired writers had been taught constantly to 
keep up the line of demarcation, their statements 
would have been unintelligible to the great body 
of their readers in that age, and in every age, 
including even the present, — quite as much so as 
if they had represented night and day as being 
produced by the earth spinning on its axis, in- 
stead of speaking of the sun rising and setting. 
In the Word of God, both the natural and super- 
natural are referred to as the operation of God, as 
the manifestation of his glory, and the expres- 
sion of his will. Still, the distinction is kept in 
view, and is expressly appealed to. No specula- 
tive or abstruse principle is announced, but the 
inspired writers point to an occurrence as in its 
very nature beyond human or mundane agency, 
and so as evidential of an interposition from 
heaven, or sanctioning a revealed doctrine. 
" We know that thou art a teacher come from 
God : for no man can do these miracles that 
thou doest, except God be with him" (John iii. 2). 
** Since the world began was it not heard that any 
man opened the eyes of one that was born blind " 
(John ix. 32). Here there are no philosophical 
inquiries as to what the powers of nature can 
do and what they cannot, but certain works are 
appealed to, as being beyond all human potency. 



152 



GENERAL REMARKS 



The supernatural, though different from the 
natural, is not to be regarded as altogether 
disconnected from it, or as standing in no rela- 
tion to it. The supernatural, in coming into 
the lower sphere, acts in unison with the agen- 
cies already there. This is only what we might 
expect, as both are the operations of God and 
parts of one comprehensive plan. A careful 
inquiry will shew us that the supernatural is 
superinduced upon the natural, and acts upon 
the natural, subordinating the natural to it, 
without destroying it, but, on the contrary, 
raising and exalting it, all in very much the 
same way as the higher natural acts towards 
the lower natural. 

For there is a higher natural and a lower 
natural. Whether we look to the inspired 
record in Genesis or the disclosures of geology, 
we are taught that the work of creation was a 
progressive one. First, there may have been 
a time when the earth was simply mineral ; then 
it appears clothed with plants ; animals in due 
time come forth to browse upon them ; and, as 
the completion, man stands up to gaze with 
intelligent eye upon the whole. There is a 
unity of plan running along all this series. 
The plant, when it comes, is higher than the 
mineral, — a new power, the vital, has been 
superinduced ; but still the organic is dependent 



ON THE SUPERNATURAL. 153 

for nourisliment on the inorganic, and all the 
forces which operate in the mineral are active 
in the plant. Look at the more complicated 
crystals, — look at the frostworks on our flag- 
stones and windows, so like the tree in their 
ramifications, — and you at once see that powers 
are operating there which are to appear in a 
more advanced form in the plant. When the 
animal appears, it has something not in the 
plant, — in particular, it has a power of sensation 
and voluntary motion ; hut still it retains all the 
power that is in the mineral, and is dependent 
for food on the vegetable ; and so closely are 
the plant and the brute allied, that it is difficult 
to draw a line which will decidedly separate the 
higher forms of the one from the lower forms of 
the other. And when man walks forth to con- 
template all these objects, it is evident that there 
is a higher principle in him, which is not in 
the mineral, nor in the plant, nor in the brute ; 
but it is just as clear, that he has afiinities with 
the lower creation, arising from the lower crea- 
tion tending upwards toward him. Made of the 
dust of the ground, his bodily frame is subject 
to all the inorganic laws of the world, and at 
last returns to the dust, out of which it was 
formed. As an organism, he is subject to all 
organic laws ; he needs breath and food from 
without, and has an allotted period of existence. 



li^-J: GENERAL BE MARKS 

As an animal, his bones and his muscles, his 
very nerves and brain, are after the same model 
as those of the brutes ; like them, he needs 
organized matter whereon to feed ; and like 
them, he is susceptible of pleasure and pain. 
It may be maintained that the lower animals 
are, in a sense, anticipations of humanity, and 
have appetites, instincts, attachments, — as for 
offspring and home, — perceptions, and a sort of 
intelligence, which, though not identical with, 
are homologous to, certain of the lower endow- 
ments of man. 

All this does not prove, as some would argue, 
tliat man is merely an upper brute, — possibly 
sprung from the monkey, or removed from it 
only as one species is from another. In his 
bodily frame he may be simply a new species, — 
the highest of animated organisms, — with the 
fore limbs turned into hands, and his frame raised 
into an upright attitude, — and even in this, so 
far anticipated by tlie ape. But in his soul, 
endowed with the power of discovering necessary 
and immutable truth, and of discerning the 
difference between good and evil; capable of 
jeherishing voluntaiy affections — wdiich alone 
(and not mere instinctive attachments) are de- 
seiving of the name of love, — and of rising to the 
knowledge of God, and of communion with Him ; 
by reason of this soul — responsible and immortal 



ON THE SUPERNATURAL. 



155 



— he belongs not merely to a new species or 
genus of nature, but to a new order in creation. 
In respect of this, his nobler part, he is made not 
after the likeness of the brute, but after the 
image of God. He stands on this earth, but 
with upright face he looks upward to heaven. 

Still, man is not an anomaly nor an exception 
in the scene in which he is placed. That scene 
has long been in preparation for him, and when 
he arrives, he is to be the head and the crown. 
Superior to all creation, he is yet allied to all 
creation. Above the earth, he is yet drawn to it 
by an attraction which binds him and it together. 
In his body connected with the lower creation, 
in his spirit connected with the Creator, he 
is or ought to be a bond connecting God more 
intimately with his works. But, alas ! man is not 
what he was meant to be. We cannot look on 
man in his present state as the consummation of 
creation. As the plant points upward to the 
animal, and the animal upwards to man, so does 
man, in his present condition of groaning and 
travailing, anticipate a redeemed, a regenerated, 
and a glorified humanity. 

There is no incongruity in fact or in appear- 
ance between the higher natural and the lower 
natural ; — between chemical action and mechani- 
cal power — which is controlled by the affinities 
of bodies ; between the vital and the chemical — 



156 



GENERAL BEMAEKS 



whose attractions must give way before the power 
of hfe ; or between the mental and the vital — 
which can be so swayed and directed by the 
ideas, purposes, and determinations of the mind. 
Each of the new powers is something superin- 
duced upon the old. I have sometimes thought 
that the very rise in the natural, from the lower 
to the higher — so constant, so regular, so syste- 
matic, so evidently ordained — may point to, and 
almost guarantee, a rise from the natural to the 
supernatural. As the inanimate has risen to the 
animate, as the animal has risen to man, so do 
we hope that the animal man may rise to the 
spiritual man. " Howbeit that was not first 
which is spiritual, but that which is natural; 
and afterward that which is spiritual" (1 Cor. 
XV. 46). I suppose that a being of high intel- 
ligence, looking at the ape on the pre-adamite 
earth, might have guessed that a creature 
with higher endowments would soon appear to 
carry out more fully the capacity of the type ; 
and, looking at man as he is, at his wondrous 
gifts and equally wondrous defects, I cherish 
the hope that he is but the rude anticipa- 
tion of what he is to become. Howbeit, when 
that state of things comes, the whole natural 
shall be raised up to the supernatural, and the 
supernatural shall be natural, as being visibly 
embraced within the system, and these oc- 



ON THE SUPERNATURAL. 



157 



casional interpositions in our era shall be 
looked back upon as the prognostics of the 
grander epoch which has succeeded. But, in- 
stead of keeping up in these airy regions of 
speculation, we have firmer ground to stand on 
as we come down to remark that, as the lower 
nature is subjected to higher nature, so is na- 
tural action subordinated to the supernatural 
agency. 

Not even at the present " advanced stage of 
knowledge are we able to say how the higher 
natural stands toward the lower natural, hoWj 
for example, the chemical works upon the 
mechanical, or the vital on the electric, or the 
mental upon the animal functions. If we do not 
know the modus of the action of one kind of 
natural force upon another, even after all the 
experiments of modern science, how can we 
expect to know^ the mode of the operation of the 
supernatural upon the natural, in which one of 
the active powers is from a region on which we 
cannot experiment, and operates according to 
laws which we have no adequate means of dis- 
covering by generalization. When such ques- 
tions are started, our wisest course is to say, 
with the parents of the blind man when they 
were interrogated as to their son, " By what 
means he now seeth we know not." But it is 
plainly within our reach to note, that there is an 



158 GENERAL REMARKS 

analogy between the action of the higher agents 
of nature on the lower and the action of the 
supernatural upon the natural. When the vital 
power — whatever it be — works among the me- 
chanical and chemical forces, it does not annihi- 
late them, it simply subjects them to its sway. 
We often see all the three combine in one result, 
and even when the lower is restrained by the 
higher it has still the tendency to work, and will 
work as soon as the restraint is removed. Again, 
when, by an act of my will, I move my arm, the 
mental does not supersede the physiological, 
it rather summons it into action. So W'hen 
the supernatural descends among natural forces, 
physical or mental, it may not be to abolish 
them, or nullify them, or even supersede them. 
Even when they are counteracted, we may see 
their tendency breaking out at the points at 
which the supernatural is not acting; and, in 
many cases, we may trace, in the effect, their 
joint operation, in which there is no dishonour 
put upon the supernatural in its association 
with the natural, as long as natural agents are 
agents of God, which they always are, excepting 
in so far as they may be contaminated by the sin 
of man. 

The natural does appear operating and co- 
operating with the supernatural in not a few of 
the dispensations of God. Every one observes. 



ON THE SUPERNATURAL. 159 

in the pages of the inspired volume, the native 
talents, tastes, and temperaments of the writer. 
In the Pentateuch we have a narrative usually 
clear and bracing as our atmosphere, but, when 
the subject requires, darkened with awful clouds 
or shooting forth swift lightnings. In the Book 
of Job, we look, as by a window, into the hearts 
of primitive thinkers as they pondered the mys- 
teries of God's government, as they wandered 
in the darkness, as they erred in their self-con- 
fidence, and were rebuked by the light. The 
fire of David, as it rages in its fierceness or 
melts in its tenderness, breaks out in every one 
of his Psalms. The wisdom of wisdom is graven 
— as lines are on the brow — of every one of the 
sayings of Solomon. The word seraphic, so 
often applied, is vividly descriptive of the flights 
of Isaiah as he soars upward into his native 
sphere above, with unwearied wing, glistening 
in the beams of heaven. We see that Jeremiah 
has been made to eat a roll full of mourning, 
lamentation, and woe, which, however, in the 
rumination of it — like pensive melancholy — is 
not without its profit and even its sweetness. 
The soul of each of the four Evangehsts takes in 
so much of the spirit of Jesus ; thus Matthew 
accepts one part, and John drinks in another 
portion ; and each gives out what he has been 
able to receive of the fulness. The underlying 



160 GENERAL REMARKS 

doctrine is the same in the Epistles of Paul, 
of James, of Peter, and John ; but each brings 
out in his own way the truth which approves 
itself most entirely to him. The rapid ratio- 
cination of Paul has made him relished by the 
western intellect, while his eagerness of spirit 
and fervour of feeling have carried forward many 
who would have experienced a difficulty in fol- 
lowing his quick transitions of thought. James 
has ever recommended himself, both by his style 
and sentiment, to those who delight in calm- 
ness, prudence, and practical wisdom. Certain 
German theologians are fond of magnifying 
the Pauline and Petrine differences ; to me it 
seems very clear, that the doctrine of both is 
obviously the same, and that even the manner 
of the two does not differ so widely, though I 
think we do not discover so vigorous a logical 
step in Peter, while at times there would burst 
out a greater impetus, were it not that his 
spirit has been subdued by frequent falls, fol- 
lowed by searching corrections. With those who 
love intuitive contemplation, and who are averse 
to all discursive or concatenated thought, in which 
there is more than a single step between the pre- 
miss and conclusion — more than the going back 
from a fact to a principle — John has been an 
especial favourite, as he looks himself, and makes 
us look, directly on the object, aiding us at times 



ON THE SUPERNATURAL. 161 

only by a symbol, — and tliere are seasons, I think, 
in the lives of all of us when we feel that it is 
thus— even by him who himself leaned upon 
Jesus' bosom — that we are brought nearest to 
God and to heaven. It is a most happy thing 
for us that the pure light of heaven is thus bent 
and made to shew various colours as it reaches 
our mundane sphere, being reflecte from, and 
refracted by, the hearts of holy men of God, who 
" spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost," 
but who, at the same time, spake in human 
tongues to human beings. 

We see, too, that as the spiritual comes in 
among the natural in the human heart, it does 
not destroy human individuality and nationality, 
though it sanctifies and elevates both. The man 
of high intellect is still a man of high intel- 
lect, while the man of weak understanding must 
remain a man of w^eak understanding ; the man 
of resolute will is still characterized by strong de- 
termination ; the man of warm feeling is now, as 
before, easily moved and melted ; and the man of 
eccentricity may continue to do singular actions, 
^the whole of the natural endowments being, 
all the while, kept under strict moral restraints, 
attracted by more powerful magnetic motives, and 
directed to higher ends up in the heavens. We 
have to add, that the lower propensities peculiar 
to the individual — the lust, the vanity, the pride, 

L 



162 GENEBAL REMARKS 

the self-esteem — will be apt, also, to stay deep 
down in the heart, to burst out at times in 
terrible volcanoes, and pour their lava on all 
around, till such time as their source is dried 
up by the power of the "spirit which lusteth 
against the flesh," and shall finally subdue it. 

The peculiarities of his training, of his race, 
and his country, appear in the Christian, and in 
his very Christianity. The religion of the poor is 
of a somewhat different type from the religion of 
the respectable and comfortable middle class, and 
the religion of both is not the same as that of the 
refined and aristocratic classes. The Christianity 
of the rude and ignorant differs from that of the 
highly civilized and the learned. The Christian 
student of Oxford differs from the Christian 
student of the Dissenting Academy, and of the 
American Colleges, while all three differ from the 
Christian student of Edinburgh, who, again, feels 
that he is not the same as the Christian student 
of Berlin or Geneva. The Christian man of the 
type of the covenant, burning earnestly to make 
his nation and his church what they ought to be, 
differs from the Christian of the puritan phase, 
asserting individual liberty, and seeking to ele- 
vate the world by means of individual spiritual 
men leavening the mass around them ; and both 
differ from the Christian who sings Wesley's 
hymns, and gets his feelings warmed at the class 



01^ THE SUFERNATURAL. 1 J 

meeting, and pays and prays for the conversion of 
sinners ; and scarcely one of these understands, 
as certainly none of them is understood by, the 
Christian of the AngHcan estabhshment, who 
would, by all means, have religion respected and 
respectable, lifting its head calmly but boldly in 
the high places of the land, while he would have 
the gospel preached to the poor, without money 
and without price. The character of the man, 
of his early history, and of his temperament, is 
apt to come out in the struggles made by the 
soul, when the spiritual power is bringing it 
under its sway. This appears, particularly, in 
our seasons of revival. The breath of the return- 
ing spring may be felt by all the plants of the 
earth, by the strong oak which stands out in the 
breeze and in the sunshine, by the lily down in 
the waters, and the fern in the dark glens or 
caves ; but each feels it after its own fashion, and 
has its own hindrances to contend against as it 
would burst into life, and is liable to its own ele- 
mental attacks and internal maladies ; and so it 
is with the spiritual life in the soul. He who 
has been wisely and carefully trained, both in 
religious knov/ledge and self government, may 
be affected as deeply when he feels himself under 
the firm hand of a Divine power arresting him, 
as is the man who has received no training, or a 
bad training, and has just heard the Gospel for 



164 



GENERAL BEMAEKS 



the first time : but the struggle in the case of the 
latter, as never having been taught to restrain 
his impulses, will probably be vastly more violent, 
and be accompanied by a greater number of 
those pathological affections which are produced 
by high feeling. Our very national peculiarities 
come out in our Christianity. In the early 
Church, the Christian Jew was st'ill a seeker after 
supernatural signs, and the Christian Greek a 
seeker after a subtle and dialectic wisdom, and 
the Christian Galatian an impulsive Celt, and the 
Christian Eoman an organizer of men. In these 
times, the German Christian is still a German, 
and the French believer is still a Frenchman, and 
the English and the Scotch shew their national 
characteristics in their religion. In our narrow- 
ness, we Britons look on the German Christian 
as somewhat too dreamy and passive, and the 
Frenchman too quick and sentimental, but we 
should remember that they shew the same pecu- 
liarities in their worldly pursuits. The English- 
man thinks the Irish minister too oratorical when 
he preaches, and the Scotchman too argumen- 
tative, while the Irishman and Scotchman com- 
plain of the quietness of the English preacher. 
All these are apt, when they view one another 
at a distance, to doubt of each other's Chris- 
tianity, but as they come nearer, and hold a 
closer communion, they find that with minor 



ON THE S TTPEBKATURAL. 165 

differences they have far more important points 
of resemblance, — having all of them a family like- 
ness, as being begotten of God, and growing into 
a likeness to their elder brother. 



166 TEE SYSTEM m 



CHAPTER II. 

t 

THE SYSTEM IN THE SUPEENATUEAL. 
SECT. I.— THERE IS SYSTEM IN THE SUPERNATURAL. 

By system we are to understand things arranged, 
objects or truths set in order. There are such 
systems in nature. The sun and the bodies 
roUing round him constitute such a system. 
There are evidently systems in the starry 
heavens. The atmosphere, with its rarefactions 
and condensations, with its calms and its storms, 
is a system ; as is also the ocean, with its evapo- 
rations, and the counterbalancing flow into it of 
waters from the land. Every organism, vegetable 
and animal, is such a system, — all the means are 
ends, and all the ends means. And as there are 
systems in nature, so nature as a whole is a sys- 
tem. The phenomena are all correlated, as 
causes and effects, or by mutual resemblances 
and affinities. Persons are accustomed to ex- 
press this, by saying that all things are governed 
by law. But there has been an immense amount 
of confusion, and not a little error, in the views 



TEE SVPERNATVEAL. 167 

entertained by many as to the nature of physical 
law, and the relation of law to God. The lan- 
guage often employed implies that there is a 
necessity laid on God to proceed by natural law. 
And it should at once be admitted, that every 
act of God is, and must be, conformed to his own 
moral law, that is, moral nature. Butit has been 
shewn again and again that law in morals and 
law in the occurrence of physiqal phenomena 
are not the same things. It should be allowed, 
too, that law, in the sense of system or co-ordi- 
nation, rules everywhere in nature. But it is 
rash in the extreme to affirm that God should, 
or that he must, act in this way and in no other. 
The order of nature has all the appearance of 
an arrangement or device for the accom.plish- 
ment of wise and beneficent ends. It is a fact 
that it is made to supply the wants of God's 
creatures, and to render nature intelligible by 
the intellio'ent creature. Whatever else natural 
law may be, it is certainly an expression of the 
Divine wisdom, as a wise means of accomplish- 
ing a good purpose. 

I am to shew, in these Sections, that in the 
supernatural dispensations of God there is a 
grand system, with subordinate systems, — a sun 
with planets, and planets with satellites, — an or- 
ganism made up of living organisms. But let 
us understand precisely how much, and how 



168 



TEE SYSTEM IK 



little, is meant and implied in this language. 
It is not to be interpreted as involving that God 
behoves to proceed by natural law, we being 
judges ; or that from the necessity of his nature, 
or of things, he can proceed no otherwise. No 
doubt, all that God does must fall out according 
to a purpose in the Divine mind; but the indi- 
vidual occurrences may, or they may not, be 
dependent on created agencies. It should not 
be allowed, for one moment, that we are not at 
liberty to look upon an event as springing from 
the supernatural power of God, unless it can be 
shewn to be a link in a concatenated combina- 
tion. There is a loose and empty style of speak- 
ing in our day, about miracles being, after all, 
referable to a higher law, which either has no 
definite meaning, or may be understood in a 
misleading sense, and, at the best, is in no way 
fitted to gain the opponents of supernaturalism, 
who, by law, always mean one consistent thing, 
and that is, natural law. If it is meant that 
miracles can all be referred to some higher 
natural law, discoverable or undiscoverable, the 
impression may be left, that they are like 
meteors or like mesmerism, simply mysteries 
which may yet come within natural explanation, 
and which cannot, therefore, be evidential of 
supernatural action. If it is meant that they 
can all be referred to some supernatural law, 



TEE S TTPERNA TTJRAL. 169 

known or unknown, the assertion is made with- 
out a warrant from reason or from revelation. 
It would be most presumptuous in us to affirm 
that we can, in every case, discover the law to 
which the supernatural operations belong, or 
so much as be sure that there is a law. It is 
quite conceivable, indeed, that there may be 
some such law beyond our ken, but of what use 
can it be to appeal to a law unknown and un- 
knowable. It is quite as conceivable, that God 
may have wrought in our world an isolated 
occurrence, having no connexion, physical, 
causal, or dependent, with any other mundane 
occurrence, except the profound relations which 
all things have one to another in the Divine 
mind. 

But keeping these explanations steadily in 
view, we may reverently inquire whether there is 
not system in the supernatural revelations and 
dispensations of God ; and as we do so, we shall 
find not a few traces of connexion and plan. I 
speak of traces, for in many cases we have nothing 
more than prints, — such as we have seen in the 
snow, giving evidence of a living creature having 
moved in a particular direction, but scarcely in- 
dicating what the animal was. Seldom can we 
rise to so full an apprehension of the superna- 
tural system as we have attained in these last 
days of the natural. A number of reasons can 



170 



TEE SYSTEM IN 



be given for this. An obvious one is, that vre 
have scarcely so large a body of clear facts out 
of which to rise to the knowledge of the law by 
generalization. Another certainly is, that we 
seldom see the clear and undisturbed operation 
of the supernatural and spiritual law — in most 
cases we obtain only interrupted glimpses. How 
difficult did astronomers find it for long ages to 
determine the precise path followed by the 
planets, not because the planetary motions are 
irregular, but solely because no one ever saw 
them performing a full revolution; all that could 
be seen was, that they were in one position at 
one time, and in a different position at a different 
time, and it was out of the individual observa- 
tions that they had to gather the law by compu- 
tation. We are in much the same position when 
we would settle the law of supernatural occur- 
rences. We see that there is a course pursued; 
we may even anticipate it to some extent, — as in 
ancient times they could predict the time of the 
rising of a planet, when as yet they were igno- 
rant of the precise law of the planetary move- 
ments; but we may commit great blunders if we 
dogmatically affirm that we know its precise orbit 
as it moves through space and time, — quite as 
great as the ancients fell into when they settled 
prematurely the planetary paths into cycles and 
epicycles. A third reason may very possibly be, 



TEE SUFERKATUEAL. 



171 



that the laws of the supernatural may, in their 
very nature, he beyond human comprehension; 
their cycles may be more sweeping than those of 
the farthest travelling comets, or the largest 
starry constellations ; they may run from eternity 
to eternity, or come out from eternity into time, 
or their rule may lie altogether in the Divine in- 
telligence and will, and not be disclosed to us by 
a positive statement, or by an observable series 
of connected occurrences. 

Making these abatements, we may yet maintain 
that we discover clear indications of ordination 
and subordination in the supernatural dispensa- 
tions of God, analogous to, though by no means 
identical with, those of the kingdom of nature. 
There are everywhere relations, evidently heaven- 
designed, of one thing to another. There are 
parts related to parts, and all constituting a con- 
nected whole. There is an apparatus instituted 
to produce a grand result, and, everywhere in the 
process, means producing ends, and ends w^hich 
are means to higher ends. There are series 
flowing on like rivers in their appointed channel, 
and bearing their waters, and much wealth that 
floats on them, to their appointed destination. 
There are times and seasons — like the days and 
years and geological epochs of the natural world 
— which begin at a point and reach a consum- 
mation. There are correspondences among cha- 



172 



THE SYSTEM IN 



racters and ordinances not unlike those beautiful 
homotypal, homologous, and analogous corres- 
pondences which later science has been dis- 
covering everywhere in the vegetable and animal 
kingdoms. There is a gradual advance in light 
and knowledge, and a development like that of 
the plant — till seed is brought forth ; like that of 
the geological ages — till the earlier types are all 
fully unfolded and embodied in an 'archetype. 
There is more than a conglomerate of systems, 
there is a group, there is a system, of systems. 
Whatever other centres the inferior systems may 
have, they all form part of one grand system, 
circling round an attracting body, which keeps 
them in their places, and illuminates them as 
they rotate around it. Need I say that this ob- 
ject is Jesus Christ, in his incarnation, his life, 
his death, and ascension. 

The supernatural dispensation has respect 
throughout to God, to his law, and his glory, 
on the one hand; and to man, to his sins, and 
his restoration to peace and holiness and com- 
munion with God through a mediator, on the 
other. It is said to originate in the Divine love, 
to be the product of the Divine wisdom and 
power, and to manifest the Divine righteousness 
and faithfulness. It brings peace to man, plants 
him on the elevation from which he had fallen, 
and sends him forth on a career of evangelical 



THE SUPERNATURAL. 173 

obedience. It is not needful to quote isolated 
passages to prove this, — it is written on the very 
face of the Word of God, it is woven into the 
very texture of the supernatural system. It is 
briefly expressed in the song of the multitude of 
the heavenly host, " Glory to God in the highest, 
and on earth peace, good will toward men." 

There are intimations not obscure in Scripture 
of particular economies holding a relation to the 
great one devised in the counsels of a past eter- 
nity, which is being executed progressively in time, 
and is reaching forward to the coming eternity. 
It is very often described as a covenant. David 
speaks of it as " an everlasting covenant, ordered 
in all things and sure" (2 Sam. xxiii. 5). Of 
that covenant Jesus is the mediator (Heb. xiii. 6); 
That covenant takes special forms in different 
circumstances and in successive ages. It is, for 
example, a covenant with Noah, with promises 
given to him and his posterity, and obligations 
laid on them (Gen. vi. 12). It is a covenant with 
Abraham, concentrating titles and privileges in 
him and in his seed (xxii. 17, 18). It is a cove* 
nant with the children of Israel at Sinai, in 
which a most instructive but somewhat burden- 
some ritual is enjoined, while large assurances are 
held out to them (Deut. iv. 13, &c.). It is entered 
into specially with King David as the father of a 
seed (Ps. Ixxxix. 3). The later prophets speak 



174 



THE SYSTEM m 



of the covenant in its older form giving way in 
favour of a new covenant. *' Behold the days 
come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new 
covenant with the house of Israel and wdth the 
house of Judah." " After those days, saith the 
Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, 
and write it in their hearts, and will be their 
God, and they shall be my people (Jer. xxxi. 
31, 33). In interpreting such passages, the word 
covenant has often been stretched far too rigidly, 
to bring heavenly things dow^n to the level of 
human transactions. Still, the language points 
to a counsel of vast depth which we cannot fully 
fathom, and to an arrangement with obligations 
and sanctions entered into with men, in all cases 
through a sacrifice — the typical sacrifices in the 
older dispensation, and the real sacrifice in the 
New Testament. 

The word ordinance is applied by the inspired 
writers to the arrangements which God has made 
in nature. " Thou hast established the earth, 
and it abideth; they continue this day according 
to thine ordinances, for all are thy servants" 
(Ps. cxix. 90, 91): compare Job xxxviii. 33 ; Jer. 
xxxi. 35; xxxiii. 25). It is the word applied 
in Scripture to those orderly injunctions which 
God laid down to the Church as to the services 
required of His people. The covenants of God 
had all ordinances of Divine service (Heb. ix. 11). 



THE SUPERNATURAL. 175 

In the Old Testament Church there was in 
the priesthood an order of Melchizedek (Heb. 
V. 6, 7), and an order of Aaron (Heb. vii. 11). 
The sanctuary and its furniture were all made 
after a pattern shewn by God to Moses on Mount 
Sinai (Heb. viii. 5). 

There are also traces of a plan in the New 
Testament. It is a kingdom, a kingdom set up 
on the earth, not a kingdom of this world, but 
the kingdom of heaven upon earth, with a living 
king, but to be established and defended not 
with carnal but spiritual weapons (John xviii. 
36 ; 2 Cor. x. 4). It is a house, a buildmg in 
which Christ rejected is the corner-stone, and 
built upon him are, first Apostles, and then all his 
followers, each in his own place, as living stones. 
The company of the faithful is at first a very 
small one, meeting in an upper room at Jeru- 
salem ; but, in consequence of a predetermined 
and prayed for outpouring of the Spirit — the re- 
ward and the first-fruits of Christ's work — the 
number is largely and rapidly increased ; and in 
an age or two the Gospel is preached for a wit- 
ness in all the provinces of the Roman empire. 
But in the midst of these triumphs there are 
intimations that antichrist is already working, 
that there will be a long falling away, and 
that the Church will have much to suffer (2 
Thess. iii. 31— ,^3 ; 1 Tim. iv. 1—8). The inspired 



176 THE SYSTEM IN 

volume closes with a JDrophecy of things that 
" must be hereafter " (Rev. iv. 1), in which there 
is a book of Providence with seven seals opened, 
and seven angels sounding trumpets, and seven 
vials poured forth, all shewing that there is a 
pre-ordained system in the evolutions, and 
battles, and final triumphs of the Church. The 
history of that Church is symbolized in the life 
of its earthly head. Descending from heaven, 
its earthly birth is in the stable at Bethlehem ; 
it goes on doing good, and spreading a hal- 
lowed influence around it, in lowliness and com- 
parative obscurity ; and in the conflict in which 
it seems defeated it gains its greatest triumphs, 
and when it seems buried out of sight it rises 
and reigns for ever. 

In the Sections which follow, I am about to 
shew that Revelation is systematic throughout. 
After this has been done, the reader will be in 
a better position to appreciate the advantages 
arising from this mode of procedure. At this 
place it will be enough to indicate them in rude 
outline. The systematic character of the alleged 
revelation, its close connexions, and its varied 
relations to God and to man, enable us to estab- 
lish with more ease and certainty, that it is a 
real revelation of God. The general suj)er- 
natural character of the revelation also takes 
out of the region of the natural a number of 



THE SUPERNATURAL. 177 

events which we could not certainly pronounce 
to be miraculous, unless from their connexicwi 
with the system. The whole becomes more 
comprehensible by the mind of man, which 
seeks after the correlations of things, when we 
see somewhat of the plan of the procedure and 
the ends contemplated. Nor is it a small advan- 
tage of the orderly character of the revelation 
of God, that when we apprehend it, we are able 
at once to set aside certain pretensions to super- 
natural action— just as the naturalist, from his 
acquaintance with the homologies of nature, at 
once turns away from the stories about the unicorn 
and the sea serpent. Nor is it to be omitted, 
that as the knowledge of natural laws gives us 
prescience, and enables us so far to anticipate 
the future, so the systems of types, of prophecy 
and doctrine, and the general laws of the spiri- 
tual economy, open far ranging views of the 
coming destiny of our world, and give us 
glimpses through the rolling mists of the world 
to come. 



M 



178 



TEE SYSTEM IN 



' SECT. II.— THE TYPICAL SYSTEM OF REVELATION. 

Every man of science knows that there is a 
system of types in nature. Tracing it from the 
geological ages clown to the present time, we find 
it characterized by several marked features. 

First, there is a set of agencies in nature pro- 
ducing orderly results. We see this even in 
inanimate creation, in the spheroidal shapes of 
the planets, in the elliptic movements of the 
bodies moving round the sun, and in the motions 
of the stars through space. We may perceive 
it on the earth, in the regular crystalline forms 
which minerals assume, and which bring them 
under rigid mathematical laws. Every one may 
observe it in the forms of plants and animals, 
and in the cycles which they run as they advance 
from their germ through settled stages to their 
maturity, and then die and disappear. The cell 
out of which the whole structure is formed has 
its regular shape and constitution. Every mem- 
ber has its model form ; the stem in the plant, 
the bone in the animal, being typically a column 
enlarged at each end. Every organ of the plant, 
be it leaf, or branchlet, or root, is made to take 
its own form, and there is a typical shape for 
each of these in every species of plant. There 
is, likewise, a model for every vertebra in the 



TEE SUPERNATVRAL. 



179 



backbone, and for every limb of the animal. By 
the combination of the several typical parts, the 
whole plant and animal is also made to take a 
general typical form, which allies it with the 
members of the-organic kingdoms, and a special 
typical form, which distinguishes it from all 
others. 

. Secondly, the agencies at work produce a 
series of orderly results in succession, each 
growing out of others antecedent. It is thus 
that we have the " herb yielding seed, and the 
fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose 
seed is in itself after his kind," and the animal 
begetting an offspring after its own likeness. It 
is thus that in the geological ages we have every 
epoch arising out of the preceding one, by causes 
natural or supernatural. Some have supposed 
that the whole can be accounted for by natural 
causes still operating, and have certainly ex- 
plained much in this way, though they have 
hitherto failed to give any account of the intro- 
duction of the first organism, or of successive 
orders of plants and animals. Others have been 
more inclined to think that the production of 
new species of animated beings has proceeded 
from natural causes undiscovered, perhaps un- 
discoverable by man, and certainly not acting in 
the present state of things. Others at once call 
in a supernatural power to account for the pro- 



180 TEE S YSTEM IN 

duction of every new species of living being. It 
is not needful for our present purpose to take 
any side in this controversy, except to declare 
that natural causes certainly seem utterly inca- 
pable of producing such a being as man, and 
that the statemerit of Scripture that man was 
created by a special act is in full accordance with 
the facts of science. It is certain on all the 
theories that, by an agency of God, natural or 
supernatural, one state of things has arisen out of 
another ; part of the causes, those bearing on the 
inanimate portion of the earth, being allowed on 
all hands to be natural, and the whole being 
resolved, on every hypothesis, by the religious 
man, into the counsel of God. Coming down to 
the human and historical period, we find the 
present state of things to be the issue of all that 
has gone before. Thus the civilization of these 
times is the product of a long series of causes, 
among which w^e must place the learning and 
refinement of Greece and Eome, which again 
were influenced by still older and eastern states 
of society. We get only glimpses of the order 
of the geological epochs, and of the very complex 
march of historical events, and there is quite as 
much need of restraint as of encouragement 
being bestowed on the rash theories wdiich are 
being promulgated to account for the whole 
process. But we see enough to convince us that 



TEE SUFEENATTIEAL. 181 

there is a pre-ordained geological, and, we may 
add, social plan, in which the present has a 
relation to the past, and proceeds out of it 
according to the arrangements of an all-wise 
counsel. 

Thirdly, natural agencies produce a succession 
of results in which there is progress. For there 
is oertainly a law of progression, and of develop- 
ment too, in the mundane system. Speculators, 
mdeed, have often misinterpreted and perverted 
it, some setting aside all Divine agency in favour 
of mere physical causation, and others admitting 
God only pantheistically, as acting in nature but 
not above it. Still there has been, and there 
evidently still is, an advancement from the lower 
to the higher, and the springing of a farther 
stage from a simpler state of things. Geology 
shews an advance, from seaweeds up to the 
plants yielding the richest fruits and to the 
trees of the forest, and from zoophytes up to 
quadrupeds and to man. In our own epoch the 
discoveries of science and the inventions of art 
are new powers added to help on the advance- 
ment of the race ; and they make the ground 
yield a larger produce ; and they give to human 
beings a greater power over the elements ; and 
they increase the number of rational creatures in 
proportion to the irrational ; and they provide a 
better sustenance for man's wants; and they 



182 



TEE SYSTEM IN 



lessen disease and prolong life; and they lielj) 
on our advancement in knowledge and refine- 
ment. All this is evidently predetermined by 
God, for it is palpably the result of agencies 
which he has instituted. 

Fourthly, there is a still more peculiar ele- 
ment in the typical system of nature — the earlier 
is a sort of prefiguration of the later. The seed 
contains what is to become the full-grown plant. 
The embryo has already what is to expand into 
the full-grown animal. The earlier geological 
ages shew rude types, with capacities which be- 
come developed only in the more finished forms 
of later vegetable and animal life. 

The language of our two greatest living natu- 
ralists cannot be too frequently quoted as to the 
prophetic plan of nature. " It is evident," says 
Agassiz," " that there is a manifest progress in 
the succession of beings on the surface of the 
earth. This progress consists in an increasing 
similarity to the living fauna, and among the 
vertebrata especially in their increasing resem- 
blance to man. But this connexion is not the 
consequence of a direct lineage between the 
faunas of different ages. There is nothing like 
parental descent connecting them. The fishes of 
the Palaeozoic age are in no respect the ancestors 
of the reptiles of the secondary age, nor does 

* Agassiz and Gould's Comparative Physiology, p. 147. 



TEE SVPEBNATURAL. 183 

Man descend from the mammals which preceded 
him in the tertiary age. The hnk by which they 
are connected is of a higher and immaterial na- 
ture ; and their connexion is to be sought in the 
view of the Creator Himself, whose aim in form- 
ing the earth, in allowing it to undergo the 
successive changes which geology has pointed 
out, and in creating successively all the different 
types of animals which have passed away, was to 
introduce man upon its surface. Man is the end 
towards which all the animal creation has tended 
from the first appearance of the first Palaeozoic 
fishes." The language of Owen is equally ex- 
plicit" : — " The recognition of an ideal exem- 
plar in the vertebrated animals proves that 
the knowledge of such a being as man must 
have existed before man appeared; for the Di- 
vine Mind which planned the archetype also 
foreknew all its modifications. The archetype 
idea was manifested in the flesh long prior to 
the existence of those animal species that ac- 
tually exemplify it. To what natural laws or 
secondary causes the orderly succession and pro- 
gression of such organic phenomena may have 
been committed, we are as yet ignorant. But if, 
without derogation of the Divine power, we may 
conceive of the existence of such ministers, and 
personify them by the term ' Nature,' we learn 

* On Limbs, p. 86. 



184 



THE SYSTEM IN 



from the past history of our globe that she has 
advanced with slow and stately steps, guided by 
the archetypal light amidst the wreck of worlds, 
from the first embodiment of the vertebrate idea 
under its old ichthyic vestment, until it became 
arrayed in the glorious garb of the human form." 

Let us inquire whether there may not be some- 
thing analogous to all this in the dispensations 
of grace. 

I. There is an order and a method in the 
supernatural dispensations of God. In nature 
there is a uniformity of composition and structure, 
and a unity of aspect, which enable the experi- 
enced eye to distinguish at once between the 
works of God and the w^orks of man, between the 
actual phenomena of the world and the creations 
of human phantasy. There is a like unity in 
the revelations of God. From the beginning, 
they appear as an announced provision for 
saving a people from the effects of the fall, 
through a Deliverer sent from heaven, but taber- 
nacling on the earth. This idea, without being 
fully unfolded, runs through all the dispensations 
of the Old Testament, is embodied fully in the 
work and death of Jesus, and is declared cate- 
gorically by the apostles in their epistles. This 
gives a unity to the doctrine — it all hangs on 
the circumstance that God has provided a ransom 
for sinful man ; a unity to the events of provi- 



THE SUPERNATURAL. 185 

dence — to the deliverances, for example, wrought 
for God's people m successive ages ; a unity to 
the ordinances and worship, — they invite us as 
sinners to approach God, propitiated by an 
atonement ; a unity to the very characters set 
before us for contemplation, — they are all justi- 
fied by free grace, and they walk by faith, 
and are seeking to become holy. 

II. One dispensation rises out of another. In 
geology there are mineral, but more especially 
fossil characteristics, which enable us to group 
the strata into systems. If we compare the older 
with the later, we find them difi'ering very widely 
from each other — thus we seek in vain below the 
Tertiary Formation for any species of animal 
now living. But on the other hand, we discover 
a unity of type running through the whole series, 
and if we compare the immediately successive 
formations, the difi'erences do not appear so 
great, and farther research is tending to fill up 
the breaks. There are, in like manner, systems 
or economies in the supernatural dispensations, 
as revealed in the Word, such as the antedilu- 
vian, the patriarchal, the Mosaic, the prophetical, 
consummating in the Christian. There is, no 
doubt, a vast difference between the light enjoyed 
by us in Christian times, and that vouchsafed to 
the patriarchs, indeed, to any who lived before 
Christ—" he that is least in the kingdom of 



186 



THE SYSTE3I IN 



heaven" is greater than the most privileged of 
those who hved in these early times. In the 
palaeozoic times, if we may so call them, patri- 
arch and prophet have an antique aspect, and a 
stiff and rigid shape, compared with the more 
flexible forms of life in Christian times; but there 
runs a unity of type through the whole doctrine 
and all the characters, and the one system ever 
slides into the other. We can see that the 
Christian dispensation, though an advance, grew 
out of the Jewish, and how the Jewish sprang 
from an older economy. 

III. There has been progress in the religious 
systems. In geology there have been fanciful, 
and false, and atheistic theories of development ; 
but there is, after all, a true doctrine, and this 
whether men have or have not been able to seize 
it. With not a few partial breaks and anomalies, 
there has been an advance from the lower vege- 
table and animal to the higher ; and also an 
advance from the more general and rude to the 
more specific and adapted ; from a loose life 
spread over the organism to a more localized and 
intense life ; from organs suited imperfectly to 
many purposes, to organs fitted admirably for 
more special ends ; from rude instruments of 
defence and attack, to a more refined apparatus 
for preservation ; from vague to more peculiar 
instincts ; from instincts which go on bhndly to 



THE SUPERNATURAL. 187 

a purpose, to instincts which can vary the action 
to suit the circumstances, and on to rudimentary 
reason. There is a parallel advance in religious 
knowledge and spirituality in the reign of God, 
as a system introduced into our world. It is 
the same God that is revealed in the Book of 
Genesis, in the Book of Isaiah, and in the 
Epistles ; but surely he is more fully disclosed 
in the last of these than in the two previous, 
and in the second than in the first. It is the 
same method of reconciliation made known to 
fallen man in the sacrifices of Abel, of Noah, of 
Abraham, and of the Levitical institutions ; and 
again in the life and death of Christ, and the 
commentary on the whole, which we have in the 
Epistle to the Hebrews ; but in the former the 
figure is veiled, and we see only the general 
form, whereas in the latter it is fully unfolded to 
our view ; in the former it is seen in the dawn 
ere the sun rises, in the latter under the light 
of day. The morals of the Old Testament and 
the New are fundamentally the same; but in 
the former they take a more prohibitory and 
minutely technical shape than they do in the 
Sermon on the Mount, where our attention is 
called not so much to the form as to the spirit 
which animates it. There was an advance in 
the knowledge of the disciples, from the time of 
their early pupilship, when they shewed such 



188 



THE SYSTEM IN 



ignorance, and fell into such blunders, down to 
the time when they were guided unto all truth 
by the Spirit. It may even be admitted, under 
certain restrictions, that there is development in 
the Christian Church. There is, indeed, no 
addition to the truth revealed, no change in the 
rule of faith and morals. But surely we who 
dwell in these later times, with all the lights 
kindled by those who have gone before, and 
specially with the beacon hghts kindled on the 
rocks on which many have been shipwrecked, 
are in better circumstances to appreciate the full 
spirit of the Word ; and it is certain that the 
knowledge of Divine truth is every year covering 
a larger portion of the earth's surface. 

ly. There are prefigurations in the super- 
natural dispensations. In particular, there are 
events, institutions, and persons that look for- 
ward to Christ and to Christ's day. These con- 
stitute what is usually called Scripture types by 
theologians. But the typical system of the Word 
of God is of a vastly more comprehensive cha- 
racter than divines have conceived it to be. In 
order to determine its precise nature, and to 
illustrate the whole subject, it will be needful to 
inquire somewhat minutely into the meaning of 
the phrases by which this peculiarity of the 
Divine dispensations is set forth by the writers 
of the New Testament. 



THE SUPERNATURAL, 189 

In the Word of God the phrase '' tyjDe" and 

analogous words [rhTcog, v'?:or{j7rMffig, f^oppn, i^6p(poo(rig, 
ds'r/fj^a, VKodsiyfia^ and derivations, such as hiy^Lari^ia 

'!rapadsr/&jvm^u) are usod to express a very deep 
idea running through the whole Divine economy 
resembling the " idea" {idea and e7dog) and the 
"pattern" (cra^aai/vwa) of Plato, the "form" of 
Aristotle (s'/dog), borrowed frohi him by the school- 
men, by Bacon, by Kant, and logicians generally, 
the "law" of modern physical science, and the 
" type" of natural history. This meaning has 
been very much lost sight of by divines, in con- 
sequence of their constructing a system of theo- 
logical (so they avow) instead of a system of 
Scriptural types. The words I refer to signify 
literally a form, likeness, specimen, or image. 
They are employed in Scripture to set forth a 
great truth, which has seldom been seized in all 
its width or in all its particularity. They denote 
that, in the spiritual economy of God, things are 
fashioned after a pattern, just as the natural 
sciences have shewn that there are types or 
model forms all throughout the works of God. 

Taking the word type {rv'Trog') and its com- 
pounds, we find it used in its literal sense, as 
when the Apostle Thomas declares, " unless I 
shall see in his hands the type of the nails, and 
thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe" 
(John XX. 25), The children of Israel are repre- 



190 



THE SYSTEM IN 



sented as taking up in the wilderness " types or 
images of Moloch and Remphan, gods whom they 
worshipped" (Acts vii. 43). Becoming somewhat 
more metaphorical, Claudius Lysias is spoken of 
as writing a letter after the " type" or manner that 
follows (Acts xxiii. 25). Moses is commanded to 
make the tahernacle of witness " according to the 
type that he had seen" (Acts vii. 44). Paul tells 
us that Moses, when he was about to make the 
tabernacle, was commanded to make ^' all things 
according to the type shewed" him in the mount. 
(Heb. viii. 5.) Turning to the passage in Exo- 
dus, we find that the word used is " tehegit,'" 
meaning form or exemplar, and it is translated 
in the Alexandrian version paradeigm {Tapddsr//xa), 
the very word so often employed by Plato. Paul 
represents the first man as a " type of him that 
was to come" (Rom. v. 14). The same Apostle 
speaks of believers everywhere, as being examples 
or types to others. Thus the Thessalonians are 
described as " types to all that believe in Mace- 
donia and Achaia" (1 Thess. i. 7). He exhorts 
the Philippians, " be followers together of me, 
and mark them which walk so as ye have us for 
a type" (Phil. iii. 17). He speaks of himself as 
working with labour and travail night and day, 
that he might not be chargeable to any, in order 
to " make ourselves a type to you to copy" 
(2 Thess. iii. S). Jesus Christ is represented 



THE SUPERNATURAL. 191 

as shewing forth in Paul, " all long-suffering for 
an under- type (ucror-jxwtr/g) to them which should 
hereafter helieve on Him to life everlasting" 
(1 Tim. i. 16). Peter exhorts elders to be " types 
to the flock," and points to the chief Shepherd 
as about to give the reward when he comes 
(1 Pet. V. 9). There are said to be types not only 
of persons and of character, but of doctrine. 
The Roman believers are spoken of as " having 
obeyed from the heart that type of doctrine 
which was delivered" them (Rom. vi. 17), and 
Timothy is exhorted to " hold fast the undertype 
(v'7:6rvKc^(fig) of sound words which he had heard 
of Paul (1 Tim. i. 13). There are said, too, 
to be types in the administration of God in 
punishing the wicked, as when he overwhelmed 
those that sinned in the wilderness. " These 
things were our types, that we should not lust 
after evil things as they, also lusted," and the 
Apostle adds : " All these things happened unto 
them for types, and they are written for our 
admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages are 
come" (1 Cor. x. 6, 11). 

Other phrases are employed to j^resent the 
same general truths. Thus Sodom and Go- 
morrha, and the cities about them, are '' set forth 
as a sample [MyiJ^a)^ suffering the vengeance of 
eternal fire" (Jude, verse 7). It is said of Christ 
that having by his cross " spoiled principahties 



192 THE SYSTEM IN 

aiid powers he made a sample of them (sbsiyfidTiffsv), 
openly triumphing over them in it" (Col. ii. 15). 
Paul says of the priests that offer gifts according 
to the law that they serve " unto the exemplar 
(v'^rodsf'/fia), and sliadow of heavenly things, as 
Moses was admonished of God when he was 
ahout to make the tabernacle, for see, saith he, 
that thou make all things according to the type 
shewed thee in the mount" (Heb. viii. 5). The 
same apostle, speaking of those who rebelled in 
the wilderness, exhorts us to labour to enter unto 
rest, " lest any man fall after the same example 
(b'^odeiyjtia) of unbelief" (iii. 11). Using the same 
word, Peter speaks of the overthrow of Sodom 
and Gomorrha as " an ensample unto those that 
after should live ungodly" (2 Pet. ii. 6). James 
employs the same phrase when he exhorts us to 
take " the prophets who have spoken in the 
name of the Lord for an example of suffering 
affliction, and of patience" (v. 10) ; and our Lord 
says, " I have given you as an example that ye 
should do as I have done to you" (John xvii. 15). 
Man is everywhere represented as made after 
the likeness of God {xa§" 6fioiu)(nv hov, James iii. 9). 
Jesus Christ is represented as being made in the 
likeness {opMOi[ia) of men (Phil. ii. 7), and as being 
sent in the hkeness of sinful flesh (Rom. viii. 3). 
The Apostle Paul often brings out the analogy 
between Christ's crucifixion and death and his 



THU SUPERNATURAL.^ 193 

people being crucified and dying unto sin, and 
between his resurrection and continued life and 
tlieir conversion and spiritual life. In particu- 
lar, "If we have been planted together in the 
likeness (o/Ao/w.aa) of his death, we shall be also in 
the likeness of his resurrection" (Rom. vi. 5). 

Christ Jesus is represented as being " in the 
form {/^op(pri) of God," and as " taking upon him 
the form of a servant," and " made in the like- 
ness of man," and " being found in fashion 
{(fX^itiart) as a man" (Phil. ii. 5). Paul addresses 
the Galatians as his little children, of whom he 
travails in birth again, '' until Christ be formed 
or figured" (^op^w^i^) in them (Gal. iv. 19). 

Jesus is said to be " the image (sixojv) of the 
invisible God" (Col. i. 15), and to be the "bright- 
ness of his glory, and the very figure {x^paxrrip) of 
his person" (Heb. i. 3). Those whom God fore- 
knew " he predestinated to be conformed to the 
image {ihm) of his son, that he might be the 
first-born among many brethren" (Rom. viii. 29). 
Paul, speaking of believers, says, " we all with 
open face beholding, as in a glass, the glory of 
the Lord, are transformed into the same image 

(rjjv a\)7r\v u^hva fJAra[Lop(po{j[j.s&a)^ from glory to glory, as 

by the Lord the Spirit" (2 Cor. iii. 18). Again, 
" As we have borne the image of the earthy, we 
shall also bear the image of the heavenly" (1 Cor. 
XV. 49). 

N 



194 



TSE SYSTEM IN 



The New Testament represents the prefigura- 
tive system of the Old Testament as the shadow 
((TPt/a) of a coming substance. Paul speaks of the 
Old Testament ordinances as a " shadow of good 
things to come, but the body is of Christ" (Col. 
ii. 17). The priests under the law are described 
as serving "unto the example and shadow of 
heavenly things," that is, of Gospel things (Heb. 
viii. 5). There is a distinction drawn between 
the shadow and the image (g/xwi/), for the law is 
the " shadow," and not the " very image" of the 
things (Heb. x. 1). 

I have placed these passages together, that we 
may have before us at once a full view of the 
typical doctrine of the word of God, of which 
Divines, from neglecting to look at the mean- 
ing of the words, have formed very imperfect 
notions. There is more here than the prefigura- 
tions of which so much is made by theologians, 
who, in overlooking the fundamental truths, have 
missed the ground on which the real prefigura- 
tive system of the Word of God proceeds. 
According to the Scripture account there are, 
first, model or pattern forms, which are always to 
be traced up in the last resort to God himself, to 
perfections of his, or devices of his wisdom. We 
have such in man as he came forth in the image 
of God ; we have such in the laws of his retribu- 
tive justice in punishing the wicked; we have 



THE SUPERNATURAL. 



195 



such in the great deliverances wrought for the 
Church ; and we have them, above all, in Jesus 
Christ, in his person, and in his work. Secondly, 
there are objects or events constructed after 
these patterns, by a set of agencies natural or 
supernatural, and they run on in a series ever 
repeated, like a family likeness going down from 
one generation to another. From these two cir- 
cumstances there springs a third — that there are, 
what I would call not types generally, but what 
I would call prefigurations or prefigurative types, 
that is, events and institutions pointing forward 
to others to come, in the case of the prefigura- 
tions of Christ to a great Archetype (not anti- 
type") in whom all the features of the model 
meet, ^ye may always discover some one. and, 
at times, all of these in the types of Scripture. 

1. There are in the revealed dispensations of 
God typical events, that is, events after a common 
and pre-ordained type. These relate generally to 
evil incurred, to a deliverer raised up, and a de- 
liverance effected. There is a flood from which 
some are saved, by an ark built by one instructed 
for this purpose. There is a national bondage 
from which the people are rescued by a leader 
chosen and trained, and are at last conducted into 

* Great oenfusion has been introduced into the whole subject of 
typology, by its being supposed necessary to discover an antitype 
opposed to every type. 



196 



THE SYSTEM IN 



a rest prepared. There is a long series of con- 
quests by, and subjections to, neighbouring 
tribes, and then hberty achieved by a person 
stirred up to drive back the invaders. There is 
a captivity, and at a predicted time a rescue and 
a return. All these great providential events had 
lessons for the times in which they occurred, and 
they have lessons for all times. They left deep 
impressions on the minds of the whole Hebrew 
nation, and they have created and fostered a set 
of far-ranging ideas, which have been handed 
down from generation to generation, by the re- 
cord of the events. They still supply images, 
far more vivid and far more powerful than words, 
by which to think of great spiritual truths. We 
think of sin as a subjection, a slavery, a captivity, 
and of Christ as a dehverer, and his work as a 
deliverance. 

2. There are typical ordinances, that is, ordi- 
nances after a pattern, and pointing as signs to 
spiritual truths. There were, from the very in- 
troduction of sin, appointed offerings which were 
presented, no doubt, partly as thanksgivings for 
mercies and acknowledgments of dependence, 
but were specially sacrifices of animals in which 
sin was confessed, and suffering acknowledged to 
he deserved, and faith expressed in a substitute. 
The worshipper never drew near to God, except 
through a mediating priest, and had to profess 



THE SVPERNATUEAL. 



1D7 



miworthiness wlienever he came to ask blessings. 
In the Levitical institutions there were never- 
ceasing ablutions, pointing to defilement con- 
tracted, and to the need of washing, and almost 
all things were purged by blood, shewing that it 
was by suffering and death that acceptance was 
to be secured, and sanctification effected. To 
let him know how it was that his prayers were to 
be accepted, the worshipper was to pray with his 
face towards the tabernacle or temple, and at 
the hour, morning and evening, when the lamb 
was being offered in sacrifice. When the people 
prayed without, the priest presented incense 
within the sanctuary, kindled by fire from off the 
altar on which the animal had been offered, to 
shew that there was need of a work to be trans- 
acted with God, proceeding on the sacrifice 
which had been offered. The grossly carnal, no 
doubt, did not discern the meaning of all this, 
and rested in the form without feeling the 
breathing spirit, and many, even of the spiritu- 
ally-minded worshippers, may not have been able 
to expound the truth theoretically or doctrinally 
as we can do. But the ordinances left their im- 
pressions on the minds of the devout, and these 
the very impressions produced by the exposi- 
tory statements of the New Testament. The 
rationale of the instruction was not explained at 
these times, when the church was under tutors 



198 



TEE SYSTEM IN 



and governors, but the training did not the less 
bear its fruits. These were the objective means, 
— and I beheve we can conceive of no better, — 
by which a series of subjective ideas, having a 
deep place in our deepest nature, were evoked 
into consciousness, and developed into proper 
form, and propagated from soul to soul, and 
handed down in ever increasing precision from 
one age to another. He who would take away 
these truths from the Old Testament, would be 
tearing out the very vital organs which make 
the body to live, and breathe, and move. 

3. There are typical men, that is, persons 
moulded on a pattern, and pointing to a chief 
pattern. This is a doctrine which may be so 
stated by friends or foes, as to make it look ludi- 
crous. Yet it is not so unreasonable when it is 
properly apprehended. Natural causes operated, 
always under a providential arrangement, and 
along with spiritual and divine influences, to 
produce the mode of action and style of charac- 
ter which were thus representative. The events 
ordained by God, and among which his people 
lived, the manner in which they were taught by 
the ordinances to view and to worship God, and 
the whole experience through which they passed, 
must, of themselves, have fashioned a type of 
manner and spirit and conduct, quite as natu- 
rally as physical causes, and social and moral 



THE S TTPERNA TUBAL. 199 

influences, fashioned the Jewish make and fea- 
tures. By agencies natural and supernatural 
there were moulded a series of men such as 
Noah, and Abraham, and Moses, and Daniel, after 
the model set before them, and bearing the 
image of the Coming One, to whom they looked, 
— it should be added, always in an imperfect, 
and often in a mutilated manner. 

Thus understood, there is really nothing un- 
reasonable in the idea of their being typical 
men, formed after the pattern copied by them, 
and so far exhibiting that pattern. No doubt it 
is a doctrine which may be made ridiculous, 
when fancy is allowed to run riot unrestrained 
by judgment, and resemblances are dwelt on 
which are mere coincidences, or which are 
created by the eye that is looking for them. It 
is wisest, and in every way best, in tracing the 
analogy between type and archetype, to keep 
to the general features which strike all, and 
strike at once, instead of going down into nume- 
rous and petty details. And in looking to the 
types we must never admire nor imitate the 
picture, excepting in so far as it has been faith- 
ful to the Great Original, on whom, and not on 
the mere copies, our eyes should mainly rest. 
If only we are guided by a constant respect for 
the Divine Word, and guarded by ordinary 
sense, it will be interesting, and may be profit- 



200 THE SYSTE3I 7i\r 

able, to contemplate certain of the excellencies 
of Jesus reflected from those who looked forward 
to him and to his day. 

The type often runs on from the Old Testa- 
ment into the New, and from the church on 
earth into the church in heaven. There was 
the rest of the Sabbath in Eden; there was the 
rest in Canaan after the wanderings of the wil- 
derness ; and the Psalmist points on to a rest not 
yet realized (Ps. xcv. 11); from which the Apos- 
tle argues, as Jesus, i.e., Joshua, had not given 
rest, that " there remain eth a rest to the people 
of God" (Heb. iv. 9); which rest is, first, peace of 
conscience in the peace-speaking blood of Jesus, 
then peace of heart in the pacifying power of 
the Spirit of Jesus, and the whole a foretaste 
and an earnest of the unending rest of heaven. 
In this sense there are types in the New Testa- 
ment as well as in the Old, Jesus Christ being 
the archetype in both — with this only difference, 
that whereas in the latter the figures look for- 
ward to Him, in the former they look back to 
Him, as the grand central figure evidently the 
head and chief, and the source of influence and 
of interest. In particular, there is a correspon- 
dence or a parallelism between the life of Christ 
and the life of his people. They are associated 
with him in his very death, — they deserve death, 
and he dies for them, and they die in him ; by 



TEE SUPERNATURAL. 



201 



liis death they are dehvered from the death 
which is the wages of sin, they are crucified with 
him, he dies for sin and they die to sin. There 
is a still closer connexion between the life that 
is in him and the life that is in them ; the 
Spirit which raised Jesus from the dead quickens 
them ; his resurrection is an earnest of their re- 
surrection ; the life that is in him flows into 
them; and because he lives they shall live also, — 
having spiritual life in them as an assurance 
that they shall enjoy life with him for evermore. 
Eminent believers, who have drunk deeply of his 
Spirit, come thus to be types of him ; they have 
his life in them, and they copy his example, and 
are being fashioned after his pattern, and are 
made ready to join his society in the mansions 
of his father's house in heaven. 

It is the typical system of nature which, 
always with the sky above, is' the main means 
of giving a unity to nature in our apprehensions. 
Wherever man goes on the earth's surface he 
finds, in the midst of an infinite variety, a same- 
ness in the forms of plant and animal, of man 
and woman, which makes him feel that he is 
not in another world — that the New World is 
only the other half of the Old. In hke manner, 
it is by the typical forms of the Word of God, 
always in connexion with the Archetype, — more 
than even by the consistency of doctrine, — that 



202 TEE SYSTEM m 

there is imparted a unity and a harmony to our 
religion in the ideas we entertain of it. Just as 
wherever we travel we discover that all mankind 
are of " one hlood," with common laws of intelli- 
gence and common appetencies and sympathies, 
so we are made to feel that, with not a few 
individual and national differences, the Church 
is one in all ages and countries ; that the New 
Testament is only the Old Testament in a more 
advanced form, and that its living menibers are 
all citizens of the same commonwealth and 
speak the same tongue. Separated as we are 
from them by long ages, we can enter into the 
experience of Abel as he offered his " excellent 
sacrifice ;" of Abraham, as he walked by faith 
and as a pilgrim ; of Moses, as he endured as 
seeing him who is invisible ; of Paul, as he ever 
met with the " law in his members warring 
against the law of his mind ;" and divided as we 
are from them by wide oceans, we draw to our 
hearts, as brothers, the Christian of America, 
the Christian of India, the Christian of the 
South Seas, and the Christian of Africa. All 
these join us in singing the Psalms of David, 
and the spiritual songs of a host of writers for 
the last three thousand years, and, in doing so, 
they and we feel that we have the same trials 
and the same conflicts, the same encouragements 
and the same supports. The song of Moses is 



TEE SUFERNATTIRAL. 203 

the same with the song of the Lamb, and those 
who have learned to sing it on earth will sing 
it in heaven. 

Nor is it to be omitted, that these types give 
a vividness — like reality — to the Divine record ; 
we feel as if we had seen the persons and min- 
gled in the scenes and taken part in the trans- 
actions — not of late indeed, but at some far past 
time in our history ; and as if in them we had 
laid up in our memory a set of photographs, 
which we can carry with us wherever we go, of 
persons and of objects which have interested us 
supremely. Not only so, the types supply us 
with a series of symbols, which, better than any 
words or phrases, enable us to think of great 
spiritual verities, — they are better images than 
the Romish Church supplies to its devotees, and 
not liable to the same objections — they are the 
cherubic figures of the New Testament repre- 
senting redemption and the redeemed ; and we 
still and habitually contemplate Christ's piacular 
work under the image of a lamb offered in 
sacrifice, and of his saving power under the 
image of the serpent raised for the healing of 
the wounded. 



204 



THE SYSTEM IN 



SECT. III.— THE SYSTEM OF PROPHECY. 

A prophet, in the language of Scripture, is one 
who speaks to us in the name of God. " The 
word of the Lord" comes to him, and he is 
authorized to announce, " Thus saith the Lord." 
He may have to compile an authentic record of 
facts in which the interests of the Church are 
involved, or to reveal a new and hitherto un- 
known truth, or to put forth an exhortation, 
or utter a warning, or predict an occurrence in 
the distance. 

There was doubtless a providence in the rais- 
ing up of prophets in the Old Testament Church. 
They do not appear at every time, they come in 
at the appropriate season to discharge their bur- 
den. They are often very visibly fitted, by their 
natural gifts, for the special task they have to ac- 
complish. It is so with Moses, both as an actor 
and as an author ; the training through which he 
passed has given him large experience of man- 
kind, and, along with spiritual influence from 
above, has subdued the natural keenness of his 
temper, and prepared him for bringing that vast 
multitude out of captivity, and for legislating in 
their behalf and bearing with their provocations; 
while his style is suited at once for narrative 
and for the highest poetry, being usually simple 



THE SUPERNATURAL. 205 

and pure, but fitted to rise and swell with "the 
grandeur of the theme. Does God wish to 
secure favour for his people at the courts of 
princes, he raises up such men as Joseph, and 
Daniel, and Nehemiah, in whom the loftiest 
wisdom was softened by gentleness and cour- 
teousness of manners. Does he purpose to 
scourge wicked kings and a degraded people, 
he summons to the work an Elijah, whose em- 
blem was the fire which he so frequently wielded. 
Is it his counsel to rouse a self-righteous people 
from slumbers which are like unto death, he 
raises up the Baptist as " the voice of one crying 
in the wilderness." As with their natural gifts 
and character, so also with the predilections of 
their age and country, they are sanctified and 
not destroyed. There is, indeed, a higher and 
supernatural power of inspiration working in 
them, revealing to them what they could not 
otherwise have known, imparting to them a 
power beyond their natural endowments, and 
protecting them from error into which they 
might have fallen. Still, the higher and the 
supernatural does not destroy the lower and the 
natural — which supplies the wires along which 
the heavenly power moves. The prophet is, 
after all, a man of his own time, speaking to the 
men of his age in the spirit and in the language 
of his country. What he delivers is indeed from 



206 



THE SYSTEM IN 



God, — he claims our attention to it on this 
ground, and our Lord so speaks of it, — but it is 
also from himself, it comes out from his own 
mind and breast. The prophet can say, " The 
hand of the Lord was upon me," " I was in the 
Spirit and heard," " The Spirit of the Lord came 
upon me ;" but it can be said quite as truly, " as 
is written in the book of Esaias the prophet," 
" Then was fulfilled that was spoken by Jere- 
miah," as " speaketh our beloved brother Paul in 
all his Epistles." It is the shepherd boy, now a 
king, who speaks with such spirit in the Psalms ; 
it is the gatherer of sycamore fruit who unrolls 
his burden in Amos ; it is the Jew, brought up at 
the feet of Gamaliel, but with a dialectic skill 
called forth in Tarsus, a city of no mean reputa- 
tion for philosophy, who writes to the cities 
which had been stimulated by Greek culture; 
while it is the Apostle that had leant on Jesus' 
bosom, who closes the Canon by alluring us to 
dwell at once on the object whom he loved and 
whom he would have us to love, and by opening 
to us, through vision and symbol, glimpses of 
the future. The breath of heaven plays down 
upon an instrument fashioned on the earth. 
How the two were conjoined, the natural with 
the supernatural, I believe the prophets them- 
selves were not able to declare, — any more than 
we are able to tell how our souls are super- 



THE SUPEBNATUEAL. 207 

induced upon our bodies, or how our vital ener = 
gies work with the mechanism of our frames. 

We cannot rise to an intelligent comprehen- 
sion of the Scriptures of the Old and New 
Testaments unless we look at both these aspects. 
If we do not acknowledge the Spirit of Inspira- 
tion throughout, we cannot know what is truth 
and what is error, we have no standard and no 
ultimate test. If the reader's own spirit is made 
the test, and constituted a " verifying " faculty, 
this leaves him to take what pleases and to 
reject what displeases, — to take the doctrine and 
reject the morality, or to accept the morality 
and omit the high truths on which it is founded; 
or to grasp at one doctrine and leave out the 
others — say to take the unity but repel the 
trinity of God ; or to prize one set of precepts — 
say all that relate to outward morality, and dis- 
pense with those which enjoin humility, repen- 
tance, and purity of heart. But while we discern 
everywhere the Spirit of the Lord, we must be 
wilfully shutting our eyes if we do not also 
observe the spirit of the prophet, nav, the spirit 
of his country, the spirit of his age possibly the 
spirit of his profession, and the spirit of his 
time of life. Every one disco^^ers the difference 
between the mode of writing in the Psalms and 
in the Proverbs, in the prophecies of Isaiah and 
of Jeremiah, in the Epistles of Paul and of John. 



208 THE SYSTEM IN 

We see that it is a warrior who writes in many 
of the Psahns ; a man of rank, wearied with the 
world, of its show and its pleasures, who utters 
his experience in the Book of Ecclesiastes ; a 
patriot, overwhelmed hy his country's desolation, 
who pours forth his sorrows in the Lamentations; 
and an active worker and an active thinker, full 
of a great cause and engaged in a hard struggle, 
whose mind is lahouring in the Epistles to the 
Gentiles. There is evidence in every page of 
the New Testament, that it is the Jew that 
writes and not a Greek or a Roman. The pro- 
phet is throughout a man of his age and his 
country ; and in respect of astronomy, and 
chemistry, and geology, and political economy, 
and psychology, no way beyond his time, — except 
that he is kept from positive error in his utter- 
ances. Verily, all thinking men would be 
made infidels, were they compelled to believe, in 
spite of what they see so obviously, that God 
e^peaks in the Word independent of the natural 
ao'eii^ 

It was by thus employing human beings as his 
messengers, that God secured that the prophets 
spake to the men of their generation and their 
nation. They found valuable records of what 
God had done for his people, or they got decla- 
rations from trustworthy witnesses of memorable 
events, and they proceed to draw them out in 



THE SUPERNATURAL. 209 

order, in their own style, and to suit the men of 
their age, being always guided in their selection 
of facts, and saved from errors on the right side 
and left, and quickened throughout by a higher 
spirit. Or they felt keenly the evils prevailing in 
the Church around them, their righteous souls 
were vexed from day to day by the unlawful 
deeds that were committed, and they sighed and 
cried for the abominations which were done in 
the midst of them, and out of the abundance of 
the heart the mouth spake, and they unrolled 
their complaint as a burden that weighed ter- 
ribly on their souls. Or they saw that their 
erring and smitten countrymen needed encou- 
ragement in their disasters, in their slavery, or 
in their banishment, and they rejoiced to place 
before them the new hope which God conde- 
scended to raise up as a light in the darkness. 
It is most interesting to us to observe the human 
working with the Divine ; the human, as the 
lower, being always subordinated to the Divine, 
as the higher and the authoritative. It is 
quickening to us to feel, that when God speaks, 
as he every where does in his Word, it is through 
a human and not an angelic m.essenger, and that 
it is in human speech, coming through the ope- 
ration of a human understanding, and from off 
a human heart, and is thus received by our ear, 
by our understanding, and our heart. It is in- 





210 



TEE SYSTEM IN 



structive, withal, to have the truth presented in 
such different Hghts, and under such varied 
aspects, as it is reflected from the men and their 
times and their country ; and as we examine it, to 
discover the higher and ever higher place allotted 
to the moral and spiritual, compared with the 
sensible, the symboUc, and ceremonial, till we 
reach the brightest and purest revelation in the 
person of Christ, and in the doctrines of his 
apostles. 

Sometimes the instruction was uttered orally, 
and it spread from one man to another, — as 
intelligence travels, often with amazing celerity, 
in countries in which written or printed com- 
munications are unknown ; and it was handed 
down as a precious legacy from one generation 
to the succeeding. From the very institution 
of the Hebrew commonwealth at Sinai there 
was a body of Levitical scribes, whose office it 
was to give instruction to the people, old and 
young; and from the time of Samuel, there 
was a special " School of the Prophets," Avho 
proclaimed the will of God in a more public 
manner. But every one knows how truth 
becomes corrupted as it passes thus traditionally 
to distant regions and distant ages ; and so we 
have from an early date, from the time of Moses, 
the lively oracles of God committed to writing ; 
and the volume, at first small but with most 



TEE 8 UPERNA TTIRAL. 211 

precious contents, gets additions at irregular 
intervals, till now we have a book as large as 
the common man can well master, and wdth a 
body of truths quite sufficient to exercise the 
deepest thoughts of the deepest thinkers. This 
teaching, like everything else in the natural and 
spiritual providence of Grod, is progressive, it is 
a seed springing, expanding, and ripening. The 
teaching of the early times is for the benefit of 
later ages. The pupils of one age become the 
teachers of the next, and add their own acquisi- 
tions to the stock of knowledge which had been 
received by them, and the whole goes down the 
stream of time as a gathered and accumulated 
freight. Ideas are kindled by symbols, and great 
providential events, and deeds of faith, and self- 
sacrifice, and are passed like torches from hand to 
hand. By the " gifts and sacrifices" under the 
law, the ideas of gratitude and devotedness to God, 
the ideas of sin and atonement were stirred up 
and kept alive. By great historical occurrences 
— such as the deliverance from Egypt and the 
restoration from the captivity of Babylon, the 
idea of a salvation from the condemnation and 
slavery of sin was raised up and made to float 
through ages, till it was fully realized in the life 
and character and work of Jesus. All this, 
revelation, from its commencement in Genesis 
to its close in Revelation, has been preserved to 



212 



TEE SYSTEM IN 



US as the wisdom of divers ages and men and 
nations, as well as the wisdom of God, for " holy 
men spake, being borne or carried {<pip6/j,svoi) of 
the Holy Ghost" (2 Pet. i. 21). 

Such language implies that the Scriptures are, 
throughout, the work and the Word of God. It 
is God who speaks by his prophet, " Well spake 
the Holy Ghost by Esaias the prophet" (Acts 
xxviii. 25). Paul, writing to a minister who was 
to expound it, says expressly, " All Scripture is 
given by inspiration of God" (2 Tim. iii. 16). 
This language is not to be so stretched as to 
imply that the writing of the Scriptures was 
supernatural throughout, for in that very Word 
the natural, so far as it is not sinful, is described 
as the operation of God, as Elihu says, " There 
is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Al- 
mighty giveth him understanding" (Job xxxvii. 8). 
But the statement assuredly carries with it that 
the Bible is free from error; for error never 
can be the work of God, or come from the 
inspiration of the Almighty. 

Coming now to that branch of prophecy w^hich 
is predictive, we find that it, too, is of the nature 
of a system. It appears, like every living thing 
on the earth, at first as a seed or germ, which is 
evidently to grow into a living organism ; but 
the wisest man cannot very well tell what is to 
be the special form taken by it. All. that we 



TEE SJJFERNATURAL. 213 

can gather from the first prediction is, that One 
sprung from the human race is to appear and 
to remedy the effects of the fall, and crush the 
very head of the Arch Enemy, while he himself 
is to suffer in the contest ; and that there is to 
be an enmity throughout the world's history 
between two manner of people, the seed of 
the woman and the seed of the serpent (Gen. 
iii. 15). It is not to be supposed that we have 
transmitted to us every revelation which God 
was pleased to make to the early Church ; what 
is handed down may be taken as specimens of 
the remainder. The predictions were like the 
heads of families in these times, who w^ere the 
progenitors of a numerous seed, to whom they 
left their name, their privileges, and their wide 
possessions. A new germinating promise or pre- 
diction — like a new species of plant or animal — 
is deposited at every great crisis of the Church, 
when a new formation (to use a geological 
phrase) is being introduced, or when hope might 
be extinguished by threatening evils. It is 
when the traces of the flood are yet upon the 
earth, and the fear of the recurrence of a similar 
catastrophe is oppressing the mind, that the as- 
surance is given that waters shall never again 
sweep away the inhabitants of the world (Gen. 
ix. 11). It is when the visible Church is being 
narrowed into the one family of Abraham, that 



214 



TEE SYSTEM IN 



ill the very foundation of the structure then 
reared there is deposited the truth that his seed 
was to he a hlessing to all the nations of the 
earth, who are therefore once more to be em- 
braced within the commonwealth (Gen. xxii. 18). 
When Jacob is dying in a strange land in 
which terrible oppressions are about to come on 
his descendants, this hope is kept up by his 
assuring them of a Shiloh who was to gather the 
people to himself (xlix. 10). When the children 
of Israel are constituted into a commonwealth, 
and are about to be settled in the land allotted 
to them, a new series of budding promises, with 
far-ranging warnings of judgment, are announced 
to them, with the special assurance of a prophet 
after the type of Moses, who shall exercise 
authority and command attention (Deut. xviii. 
15, 18). In the comparatively settled state of 
things which succeeded, it does not appear that 
the harp of prophecy uttered any new prediction. 
But from the time when the state has reached 
its highest worldly prosperity under David, down 
through its declensions, divisions, and scatter- 
ings, till the people once more have a settlement 
in their land, there is a series of predictions at 
once comprehensive and minute. In the time 
of their great warrior king they relate specially 
to a kingdom to be established in the family of 
David, but of a far higher character than any 



THE S UPERNA TUBAL. 215 

temporal sovereignty, there being at the same 
time intimations not a few, that the throne is to 
be reached through suffering and blood. From 
the time of Hosea and Amos in Israel, and of 
Joel and Isaiah in Judah, there are distinct an- 
nouncements of the dissolution of the existing 
kingdoms as a punishment of their wickedness, 
but only that the prophets may exhibit in a 
brighter light the unending reign of peace that 
was to follow. When the Jews were led into 
captivity, they carried their predictions with 
them, and these formed a bond of national union 
and a ground of hope, and allured a body of 
people to return to their land in very discourag- 
ing circumstances ; and to them, as they rebuilt 
their temple and reared the walls of their com- 
monwealth, encouragements were held out by 
Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, sufficient to 
keep the nation in a state of waiting and expec- 
tation. Again, there is a period of four centuries 
in which there is no new supernatural element 
introduced ; but as things take their natural 
course, a soil is formed out of which the Messiah 
comes, as *' a root out of a dry ground." The 
long-expected One rises at the appointed time, 
like the sun upon the earth, but evidently not 
from the earth. The predictive portion of pro- 
phecy thus forms a system, rising like a river 
from a fountain, and augmented at irregular dis- 



216 



THE SYSTEM IN 



tances by stream after stream as it moves on, — 
and we may add, going out (as we shall see 
forthwith) as gradually by many mouths. We 
cannot understand prophecy at all, unless we 
view it in this its complex structure and varied 
adaptations, unless we bear in mind in particular, 
that the doctrinal, the preceptive, the promis- 
sory, and denunciative parts are indissolubly 
interwoven with the predictive parts, unless we 
observe that the utterances are brought out or 
occasioned by contemporaneous natural occur- 
rences, and that they had a meaning and a 
lesson to the generation of men to whom they 
were first delivered, and that the prediction was 
a gradual rolling on of threads of anticipation, — 
even as the fulfihnent (as we shall see imme- 
diately) is a gradual rolling off from age to age 
of a web of accomplishments. 

The prophet is a man of his time, and is conse- 
quently the better able to speak to the men of his 
time. It is Jacob speaking to his children, as he 
dies in a strange land; or Moses, ere he leaves the 
people whom he had so long guided, giving his 
last warning and blessing ; or it is David raised 
from following the ewes to a kingdom, and seeing 
a far more glorious kingdom in the future. In 
the ages when the commonwealth has culmi- 
nated and is visibly declining towards a troubled 
evening, there is a wild and a plaintive tone 



THE SUPERNATURAL. 217 

mingling with the more cheerful notes in the 
song which the prophets sing. They have a woe 
to unburden ; they have a judgment to denounce 
upon Israel or upon Judah, as it becomes bold 
in its idolatry and its rebellion ; or it is the bur- 
den of Nineveh, or the burden of Egypt, or the 
burden of Babylon, or the burden of Tyre, or the 
burden of Edom, as each of these in its turn 
oppresses the children of Israel, or threatens to 
crush and extinguish that church which is the 
hope of the world. The spirit of the prophet is 
deeply moved as he sees his countrymen forsak- 
ing the true God for the worship of idols, and 
leaning upon other arms than the power of God, 
aud he pours forth his denunciations with an ear- 
nestness which obviously comes from his deepest 
heart, but, at the same time, with minuteness of 
detail and incident, which, when we compare it 
with the fulfilment in after ages, shews clearly that 
his eyes had been supernaturally opened to look 
into the far distant future (Deut. xxviii. ; Jer. xv. 
4, xlvi. 13, 26 ; Ezek. v. 15). It is when Nineveh 
is threatening the liberties, and the very exist- 
ence of God's people that Nahum utters his de- 
nunciation — "• What do ye imagine against the 
Lord ? he will make an utter end ; affliction shall 
not rise up the second time. For while they be 
folden together as thorns, and while they are 
drunken as drunkards, they shall be devoured as 



218 



THE SYSTEM IN 



stubble fully dry;" and again, "the gates of the 
rivers shall be opened, and the palace shall be 
dissolved ;" " the gate of thy land shall be set 
v^ide open unto thine enemies ; the fire shall de- 
vour thy bars" (Nah. i. 10, ii. 6, iii. 13). It is 
when the children of Israel are going down to 
Egypt for help, that Ezekiel proclaimed, '• And 
the pride of her power shall come down," " and 
her cities shall be in the midst of the cities that 
are wasted" (Ezek. xxx. 6, 7). It is when Baby- 
lon is rising into power, or when her power is at 
its height, and Judah is completely at her mercy, 
that one prophet after another pronounces her 
doom (Isa. xiii. ; Jer. L, li., &c.). It is when 
Tyre is at the summit of its commercial great- 
ness and wealth, and alluring the children of 
Israel to idolatry, tint Ezekiel declares " For 
thus saith the Lord God, when I shall make thee 
a desolate city, like the cities that are not 
inhabited, when I shall bring up the deep upon 
thee, and great waters shall cover thee" (Ezek. 
XXV, xxvi). At the very time when Petra seemed 
to be an impregnable stronghold, and was an 
emporium of commerce, its desolation was fore- 
seen by more than one prophet (Jer. x. lix. ; Ezek. 
XXXV., &c.). The prophecy flows ever out from 
the bursting or bruised heart of the prophet — 
as incense does from the crushed plant, or 
blood from the wounded body; and it had a 



THE SUPERNATURAL. 



219 



lesson of warning or of encouragement to the 
men of the prophets' times, as the fulfilment 
of it has a similar lesson to us and the men of 
all times/" 

All this does not prove, or tend to prove, that 
the predictions are merely the natural utterances 
of the roused spirit of the prophet ; it simply 
shews, that God had prepared by natural means 
the instrument into which he was to breathe, 
and from which he was to bring forth such 
strains of exultation or of plaintiveness. In 
using thinking and feeling men as his agents, 
God does not destroy their intelligence and 
moral feelings, or extinguish their deep aspira- 
tions, but rather allows to all of them active 
exercise and play, with a full outflow and out- 
burst. In speaking by his servants the prophets, 
he speaks not only by their mouths, but by their 
hearts, burning with indignation against sin, and 
with zeal for the Lord God of Hosts. When the 
kings went down to Elisha to consult him, he 
said, " Bring me a minstrel, and it came to pass 
when the minstrel played, that the hand of the 
Lord God came upon him." It is upon the 
spirit of his servants, roused by a hatred of sin 
and a love of God more than ever they were by 

* It is scarcely necessary to mention that the congruity between the 
prediction and the time at which it was uttered, is beautifully brought 
out in " Davison's Discourses on Prophecy." 



220 



THE SYSTEM IN 



the strains of the minstrel, that the Spirit of 
God comes and they prophesy. But it is the 
Spirit of God that speaks through them after 
all, as is proven by the nature of their utter- 
ances, so full of God, so characterized by high 
moral aims, and by the fulfilment of their pre- 
dictions, corresponding in all cases to the 
general tenor, and coming down in innumerable 
cases to the very letter, of the prediction. 

But, in order to understand the accomplish- 
ment, we must keep in view that there is also a 
systematic development and an adaptation in 
the time and manner in which the events are 
evolved. The predictions are never of such a 
character that they might enable any individual, 
or combination of individuals, either designedly 
to fulfil them, or successfully to thwart them. 
The accomphshment has almost always been 
brought about by pure natural agents, or by 
persons unconscious that they were serving any 
such purpose ; in many cases, by parties seeking 
rather to stay or frustrate them, as when the 
Jews fulfilled the predictions concerning Jesus 
in putting him to death (Acts xiii. 27). The 
prophecies, as for example, those regarding the 
final spread of the Gospel, are never so con- 
structed as to encourage those who read them, 
so to see the future that they may give up action, 
and idly wait for what they know must come 



THE SUPEBNATUBAL, 



221 



with or without their exertion. The event, 
when it occurs, is brought about by the usual 
course of things, but arrives in so incidental a 
manner as to shew that no human sagacity could 
have foreseen it ; and with such an accordance 
between the words of prediction and the occur- 
rence as to prove that the prophet had got a 
glimpse of it down to its very details, by light 
from heaven streaming through the clouds of 
our earth and illuminating it, till it caught his 
eye even at the great distance at which it was 
from him. The system of prophecy is thus a 
vehicle, a vessel moving through time at a some- 
what slow but precisely regulated pace, taking 
up the rich freight it carries at the appropriate 
times, and giving it out at the appointed 
places, ever gathering and ever giving out. We 
see things only in progress, but already there is 
enough accomplished to convince us that the 
rest will be fulfilled in its season, and that in 
the end not one jot or tittle of the utterances of 
the prophets shall remain unfulfilled. 

The doctrine of a double sense in prophecy 
has been so perverted, that calm and sober men 
are apt to be prejudiced against it. Its advo- 
cates have discovered so many fanciful meanings 
in Scripture, that shrewd and suspicious minds 
have been led to doubt whether it has a meaning 
at all, and been sceptical of the first meaning 



222 THE SYSTEM IN 

when they detected such far-fetched attempts 
to discover a second. The friends of the Bible 
must ever beware of playing into the hands of 
the infidel by making the oracles of God bear 
any resemblance to those which issued from 
heathen groves and temples, in language which 
had studiously more than one meaning, in order 
that persons might fix on the one coming closest 
to the event when it actually fell out. But, 
while we guard against this excess, we must be 
careful not to strip the prophecies of any of 
their fulness of meaning — of which the defenders 
of a double sense had a glimpse, but which they 
utterly failed to interpret accurately. The pro- 
phecy is always one and the interpretation is 
one ; but it may refer not merely to one isolated 
event, but to a series of occurrences, all of much 
the same general character, and developed the 
one from the other ; it may refer to a body with 
a head and many members. " The seven good 
kine are seven years, and the seven good ears 
are seven years, the dream is one. And the 
seven thin and ill-favoured kine that came up 
after them are seven years, and the seven empty 
ears blasted with the east wind shall be seven 
years of famine." The prophetical system here 
connects itself wdth the typical, that is, with the 
uniform mode of the Divine procedure, whereby 
events are developed one out of another, after a 



THE SUPERNATUBAL. 223 

pattern, or are thrown out of a common mould.* 
It is as if a naturalist were to tell us that the 
palm or the antelope is of such a form and 
aspect ; his description would not have a double 
or ambiguous sense, but it would apply to a 
whole group of plants or animals, some of which 
however might more fully realize the picture 
than others. What the prophet sees in vision 
is not so much a single mountain, as a chain of 
mountains of the same formation, and all of the 
same general contour ; it being possible, all the 
while, that some one, the largest and the most 
marked, may be taken as a type of all the 
others, and. embody every feature of the prophet's 
vision. Prophecy is thus the prescience of a 
providence unfolding a Divine plan. The great 
English philosopher who taught men how to 
interpret nature, has also taught us how to 
interpret prophecy, " Divine prophecies," says 
Bacon, " being of the nature of their Author, 
with whom a thousand years are but as one day, 
are not therefore fulfilled punctually at once, 
but have springing and germinant accomplish- 
ment, though the height and fulness of them 
may refer to some one age." 

* There are remarks with, a profound meaning in the Chapter on 
" Prophetical Types, or the Combination of Type with Prophecy," in 
Fairbairn's Typology of Scripture. I have always thought, that this 
able work is injured by the author not taking the word type through- 
out in the Scriptural instead of the theological sense. 



224 



THE SYSTEM IN 



When the patriarchs uttered the striking pre- 
dictions regarding their descendants, which are 
recorded in the early Scriptures, their language 
had no double or uncertain meaning ; it had its 
fulfilment, however, not in a single person, but 
in the family or the tribe. The prophet seizes, 
as it were, on the family likeness, and sketches 
it on his canvas, and the features are found to 
come out in the race — possibly with greatest 
prominence in some great personage in whom 
the prophecy culminates. It is thus we are to 
interpret the developing utterances of judgments 
to descend on the enemies of the Church, as on 
Egypt, and on Nineveh, and on Babylon, and on 
Edom, and on Tyre ; they are executed in a suc- 
cession of events till Egypt becomes " the basest 
of kingdoms" (Ezek. xxix. 15) ; till it is seen how 
the Lord has " cast abominable filth" upon Ni- 
neveh, and '^ made it vile, and set it as a gazing 
stock" (Nah. iii. 6) ; till Babylon has " become 
heaps," "without an inhabitant" (Jer. li. 87); till 
all the cities of Edom have become " perpetual 
w^astes" (Jer. xlix. 13) ; and Tyre " a place for the 
spreading of nets in the midst of the sea" (Ezek. 
xxvi. 5). It is thus w^e are to understand the 
threatenings against the Jews; they are accom- 
plished from age to age, but are realized wdth a 
special emphasis in the destruction of Jerusalem, 
first by Nebuchadnezzar, and then by Titus, in 



THE SUPERNATURAL. 225 

which the most minute features of the prophetic 
picture come out, down to the mother eating her 
own child, " for want of all things secretly in the 
siege and straitness, wherewith thine enemy shall 
distress thee in thy gates" (Deut. xxviii. 57). 
The repeated predictions about the Jews being 
" scattered among all people from the one end of 
the earth even unto the other" (Deut. xxviii. 64), 
were accomplished by a series of events in God's 
ordinary providence, as by their being carried 
away captive by the Chaldees, and again scat- 
tered by the Romans ; and it is also, I suppose, 
by natural agency — in part by the pride and ob- 
stinacy of the Jews — that they are not to be lost 
while thus scattered, '' saving that I will not 
utterly destroy the house of Judah, saith the 
Lord, for lo, I will command, and will sift the 
house of Israel among all nations like as corn is 
sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall 
upon the earth" (Amos ix. 8, 9). It is thus, too, 
that we have the fulfilment of the general 
sketches of the great antichristian corruption; 
the lineaments come out in the course of ages 
down to such particulars as " forbidding to 
marry," and "commanding to abstain from 
meats" (3 Thess. ii. 3—12; 1 Tim. iv. 1—5). In 
all these cases the occurrences being according 
to a type or law, make it quite possible that 
the prophecy, without having a double meaning, 

p 



226 THE SYSTEM IN 

may extend Over a whole course or series of 
objects or events. 

According to the view now given, a typical 
event being one of a series, may, as coming early 
in the series, be a precursor and a sort of predic- 
tion of others to follow. The deliverance from 
Egypt being after the type of the deliverance 
from sin, the former is a prefiguration of the 
latter, and the analogy holds good dow^n to . 
Jesus' coming out of Egypt ; and hence the say- 
ing of Hosea (xi. 1), " when Israel was a child 
then I loved him, and called my son out of 
Egypt," applies to Jesus (Matt. ii. 15). The 
paschal lamb being typical, the resemblance 
reaches to the circumstance that as a bone of 
the paschal lamb was not to be broken, so 
neither was a bone of Christ broken as he hung 
on the cross (Ex. xii. 46; John xix. 36). Elijah 
and John the Baptist being of the same type, 
the latter is predicted under the name of the 
former (Mai. iv. 5 ; Mat. xi. 14). The catas- 
trophe which broke up the Jewish common- 
wealth in the time of Titus being of the same 
general character as that which is to break up 
the present dispensation of our world, the pro- 
phetic description of the one merges quite 
appropriately into that of the other, as Jesus 
answers the questions of the disciples about the 
destruction of Jerusalem, and the "end of the 



TEE S UFERNA TURAL. 2 1 : '? 

world" (Mat. xxiv). As Christ and his people are 
one, there are statements which apply both to 
him and to tliem, to him as their surety and 
head, and to them in him. The passages in the 
Psalms and the Prophets about kings of the 
earth setting themselves, and the rulers taking 
counsel together against the Lord and his 
anointed (Ps. ii. 2); about his being compassed 
about with enemies and forsaken of the Father 
(xxii.) ; about a familiar friend lifting up his heel 
against one who trusted him (xli. 9); about heing 
despised, rejected, wounded, bruised, and suffer- 
ing travail of soul (Is. liii.), have their full mean- 
ing in him, but may also refer to all who suffer 
in him and for his sake. The passages which 
imply sin, such as '' God, thou knowest my 
foolishness, and my sins are not hid from thee" 
(Ps. Ixix. 5), must apply primarily to sinners, but 
secondarily to him on whom was laid " the ini- 
quity of us all," and " who his own self bare our 
sins on his own body on the tree." The inter- 
pretation in both these cases is not two but 
one, because of the unity or identity of the sub- 
ject. On the same principle the glowing and 
exulting passages at the close of Isaiah, and 
elsewhere in the prophetic writings, as to the 
glories of the coming kingdom, refer, no doubt, 
to Christ's victory over sin and death, but may 
be quite legitimately apphed to those who are 



228 • THE SYSTEM IN 

kings under him, as they conquer their spiritual 
foes, while it will receive its full accomplishment 
in what remains yet to be disclosed of the 
splendors of Christ's kingdom. 



SECT. IV.— THE PLAN OF CHRIST'S LIFE. 

The title assumed in this Section may seem a 
bold, almost a presumptuous one. But there is 
evidently a unity in the constitution of Christ's 
person, in his character, his life, his work, and 
the end for which he lives, which we may reve- 
rently inquire into. 

Here, as in regard to every other object falling 
under our notice, we find that we cannot go 
back to the absolute beginning : the fountain is 
among heights beyond our reach. But far as 
our eyes can penetrate we see that there is a 
Divine Counsel and a Divine Plan ; and it is 
ordained that the Logos which was " in the begin- 
ning," which " was with God," and "was God," 
is, in the fulness of time, to associate himself 
wdth humanity, and to appear on our earth, there 
to engage in a work with far-reaching conse- 
quences, and to submit to awful suffering and a 
mysterious death ; out of which mighty good is 
to accrue to our world, as grain springs from the 
corn of wheat which is buried in the earth and 



THE SUFERNATVRAL. 



229 



dies there (John xii. 24). What a depth of 
meaning in the expression the " Lamb slain 
from the foundation of the world !" (Rev. xiii. 8j. 
A vast apparatus of means is set agoing in order 
to his coming ; before him is a glorious streak- 
ing, rising into a glow, in the sky ere he rises. 
From the long procession that goes before of 
stars to light the Old Testament Church, we 
have some idea of what the greater Light is to 
be. At the set time he appears on our earth ; 
a body having been prepared for him, that he 
might be bone of our bone and flesh of our 
flesh, only without any of the hereditary sin 
that cleaves to us. Descending from a supra- 
mundane sphere, he enters completely within 
our terrene sphere, and accommodates himself 
to all its laws. He takes upon him, not the 
nature of angels, but is the seed of the woman, 
and the seed of Abraham ; he is born of a 
woman ; is in weak and helpless infancy, grows 
in wisdom and in stature, is subject to Joseph 
and Mary ; he eats, drinks, and sleeps ; he walks 
on the earth's, surface, bound to it and its ordi- 
nances, and subjected to its privations as any 
other weary man is, — only as we look, as we 
cannot but look, at his person, we see the glory 
shining through the veil of flesh ; and while we 
feel that he is man, emphatically man, the model 
man, the Son of Man, we are ever made to 



230 



THE SYSTEM IK 



acknowledge and to realize that he is clothed 
with Divine perfections, that he is also, and at 
the same time, the Son of God, — the twofold 
nature heing all the while comhined in a simple 
unity, the parts of which cannot be separated 
nor decomposed. 

As we meet with him and hold intercourse 
with him (as he allows us to do), we are sure 
that we have fallen in with a being who is not, 
w^ho cannot be of this earth. Lowly he no doubt 
is, but the lowlier he is in guise, we are the 
more certain that we have fallen in with one who 
has alighted from a higher and purer region, 
and bears with him the air of his lofty rank. 
It is clear that he has not come to our earth for 
the purposes of display. Ever hiding himself 
from the view, it turns out that he cannot be 
hid ; growing up " like a tender plant," our 
attention is called to him by the fragrance 
which breathes from him. Our eyes are fixed 
on him as he passes by, and we discern his 
beauty ; but as we feel it we experience a diffi- 
culty in saying wherein it consists, just as we 
cannot tell wherein lies the loveliness of light, 
we can only point to it as we would to a star, 
and say, behold and see its beauty for yourselves. 
It is now believed that the light and heat of the 
sun do not come natively from himself, but are 
the result of an action from without ; but the 



TEE STIPERN-ATTTRAL. 



231 



light and heat, the hght of purity and the 
warmth of love, that radiate from Jesus, come 
from his very nature and his inner heart, and 
they flow out spontaneously on all around. It 
is the very light of God, hut shining through a 
veil of humanity, and so seen by us under a 
milder lustre, which indeed allures but does 
not blind us. We are encouraged to draw nigh 
to him ; we feel " drawn with the cords of a 
man, with bands of love ;" in coming to him we 
feel that it is man coming to man ; that he is 
the very type of man, the man of men, with the 
nature, with the heart of a brother ; and we go 
into his presence and his company, and he talks 
with us by the way, and is known by us in the 
breaking of bread, — the conviction being ever 
pressed upon us that there is more than man 
here — that there is one with a Divine power 
and drawing us with a Divine love. High, no 
doubt, he is, so high that we cannot attain to 
his elevation ; but we see that as he stands on 
his height, he is holding out a hand to help us 
to rise to him. Bright, no doubt, is his example, 
so bright that we discover we can never come 
up to it ; and yet we feel that we are purified in 
looking at it by faith, and sanctified in the 
attempt to copy it. 

As he emerges into view from the designed 
obscurity of his childhood, we see that he. has 



232 THE SYSTEM IN 

a work i30 do. Ere that work is fully entered 
on he looks forward to it, and at the age of 
twelve he intimates that he " must be about his 
father's business." As he commences his public 
ministry, he announces " that he must fulfil all 
righteousness." It is clear that he is under 
some coyenant to do this and avoid that. Thus, 
he cannot command stones to be made bread, to 
appease prolonged hunger undergone in obe- 
dience to the Father's will, and, as we know, to 
make atonement for man's sins of appetite. He 
has an allotted time to do the work. " I must 
work the works of him that sent me, while it is 
day : the night cometh, when no man can work" 
(John ix. 4). When his hour is not yet come 
he will not be hastened (John ii. 4 ; vii. 6) ; and 
his enemies are powerless in their attempts to 
seize him (John vii. 30 ; viii. 30). When his 
time is come, he is delivered into the hands of 
men who thwart their own purposes, and un- 
consciously accomplish the counsels of heaven 
in crucifying him (Matt. xxvi. 18, 45 ; Luke 
xxii. 14 ; John xii. 33 ; xiii. 1 ; xviii. 1). There 
is evident relief and satisfaction when, in re- 
ference to the arduous work given him to do, he 
is able to say, *' It is finished" (John xvii. 4 ; 
xix. 30). 

He has not only a work to do, he has a suffer- 
ing to submit to. He is tempted in all respects 



TEE SUPERNATURAL. 



233 



like as we are ; he has to earn his sustenance 
by the sweat of his face, or have it suppHed to 
him in his w^anderings by the charity of those 
who are smitten with love to him ; he is without 
house, or home, or where to lay his head ; he is 
exposed to hunger and thirst, to pain of body and 
sorrow of mind ; we read of his '' strong crying 
and tears ;" and it is appointed unto him, as 
unto all men, once to die. He walks our earth, 
and does his work, and submits to these priva- 
tions, being all the while under a mysterious 
load such as no other human being had ever to 
submit to, — being such, indeed, that we cannot 
fully fathom the cloud, though we get some idea 
of its vastness and its blackness, as certain ex- 
pressions break from him : "I have a baptism 
to be baptized with ; and how am I straitened 
till it be accomplished" (Luke xii. 50). He can- 
not express it to men, but pours it out to his 
heavenly father. " How is my soul troubled ; 
and what shall I say, father, save me from this 
hour ; but for this cause came I unto this hour'* 
(John xii. 27). We comprehend much, but cannot 
fathom all the depth that is in such expressions 
as these, " Being in an agony," " My soul is exceed- 
ing sorrowful, even unto death." We see that it 
is an agony exceeding that which has been laid 
on ordinary martyrs, who have often triumphed 
in the prospect of their death ; a sorrow exceed- 



234 



THE SYSTEM IN 



ing the deepest gloom that has ever gathered 
around an ordinary human spirit, as it took the 
darkest view of itself and of the world, of sin and 
of God. All this has heen appointed beforehand, 
in an everlasting counsel to which he had been 
a consenting party, and he submits to it in ac- 
complishment of what had been undertaken by 
him. He shewed his disciples how he " must 
go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of 
the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be 
killed and be raised again the third day" (Matt. 
xvi. 4). He told them after his resurrection, 
" Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ 
to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third 
day" (Luke xxiv. 46). 

This work and these sorrows had evidently 
very profound purposes to fulfil. We should 
never pretend to be able to compass all the ends 
served by them, as they look towards God and 
his glory, towards other worlds, towards all the 
things that were created by him, ''that are in 
heaven and that are on earth, visible and in- 
visible, whether they be thrones or dominions, 
or principalities or powers" (Col. i. 16). But we 
can discover and apprehend some of the grand 
designs accomplished, for they are revealed in the 
Word, they have a reference to us, and we hear 
a voice responding in our bosoms. The moral 
monitor within tells us, that we ought to work 



TUE SUPERNATURAL. 



235 



out a righteousness upon the earth, and that we 
have not done so ; and here Christ is represented 
as providing it for us, that we may receive it by- 
faith (Rom. iii. '22). We have it clearly an- 
nounced, that by these sufferings Jesus pays a 
penalty and secures a redemption — " For Christ 
also once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, 
that he might bring us to God" (I Pet. iii. 18). 
In all this, glory is given to God. " Father, 
glorify thy name. Then came there a voice from 
heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will 
glorify it again" (John xii. 28). We can so far 
understand, because we can appreciate this, this 
obedience rendered in default of ours, these suf- 
ferings endured in our room and stead. The 
structure thus raised over a grave, and cemented 
by blood, may have relations indiscernible by 
us ; it goes down to depths which are beneath, 
and it goes up to heights which are above our 
view ; still it stands there as a bridge with deep 
foundations and strong ramparts, with a way 
opened by which we may pass from a state of 
condemnation to a state of justification, from a 
state of alienation to a state of fellowship. " My 
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" was 
the question put in earnest tones by the sufferer 
upon the cross, and no answer was given, for he 
who put it was, at the time, under the hidings of 
the father's face. Let us come to the foot of 



236 



THE SYSTEM IN 



the cross and answer it : '* He was wounded for 
our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniqui- 
ties, the chastisement of our peace was upon him, 
and with his stripes we are healed." 

As he descended at first from a higher sphere, 
so we feel all along that he cannot remain for 
ever on our sin-tainted earth, and we expect him 
to mount into the pure region whence he came. 
When he ascends into heaven, it is " he that 
came down from heaven, even the son of man 
which is in heaven." We go out with him as 
far as Bethany. In accommodation, as it were, to 
the natural, he goes up in order to his ascension, 
to the Mount of Olives ; but it is by a super- 
natural power that he thence ascends into hea- 
ven. A cloud wraps him from our view. We 
are sure that he who has toiled and suffered and 
died for the children of men, will not forget them 
in his new sphere, but will bear them upon his 
heart. We rejoice when we learn that he ever 
liveth to make intercession for us, that he has 
gone to "prepare a place far us, that he sends his 
Spirit to prepare us for that place, that -he will 
come again and take us to himself ; and we feel 
that it must be the highest blessedness to dwell 
in his presence, to drink of his wisdom, and 
share in his joys. 

This is the portrait presented to us, set in a 
veiy simple framework evidently constructed by 



THE SUPERN ^ 237 

men of no artistic skill. ( i . been drawn 

from imagination by fish( i^ni :. mechanics 

from Galilee ? As this question is |Ait to us we 
answer unhesitatingly, that it must have been 
taken from a living original. 



SECT, v.— THE SYSTEM OF MIRACLES. 

There is evidently a rule in the Divine Mind 
according to which miraculous interferences take 
place, and this whether man is or is not able 
to ascertain its exact nature. Miracles have 
not been wrought in all ages ; they seem to be 
confined to selected seasons, when there were to 
be developments of that plan of redemption 
which had been devised before the creation of 
the world. Even in the ages in which they 
occur they are not performed everywhere and 
on every occasion. The working of God in our 
world is, in all ages and countries, as the usual 
rule, not after the supernatural, but the natural 
mode, which is always to be understood, how- 
ever, as embracing a pre-ordained providence, 
bending down with adaptive flexibihty to the 
case of the most minute objects. God would 
have all men, always and everywhere, to look 
for the ordinary supply of their wants to that 
cosmical administration which he planned from 



238 YSTE2I IN 

the begimi w^, ;.. ,.. inite wisdom, which his 
intelhgent creaUiTu- ■. ay practically understand, 
and to which they find it good to conform ; and 
he never leads them to entertain the hope that 
he is bomid to interfere, or is likely to interpose, 
to save them from the consequences of their 
own folly, or to w^ard off affliction which may be 
predestinated for their good. 

Our Lord let the Jews know very decidedly, 
that miracles were not to be performed on the 
demand of every applicant craving for wonders, 
or anxious to be freed from attending to the 
means w^hich Providence has sanctioned for 
securing the ordinary blessings of life. When 
he saw that the multitudes were beginning to 
follow him because of the loaves and fishes 
which he had multiplied, he wrought no more 
wonders of that description. He rebukes the 
Jews because they were ever demanding signs 
from heaven, and he told the people of the city 
in which he had been brought up, "I tell you 
of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the 
days of Elias, when the heaven w^as shut up 
three years and six months, when great famine 
was throughout all the land ; but unto none of 
them was Elias sent, save unto Sarepta, a city 
of Sidon, unto a woman {liat w^as a widow. And 
many lepers w^ere in Israel in the time of Eliseus 
the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, 



THE SUPERNATURAL. 239 

save Naaman the Syrian" (Luke iv. 2o — 27). 
Those human agents, who were empowered by 
God to work miracles, could perform them not 
at their own pleasure, but only as a higher 
wisdom saw fit to allow them. Our Lord refuses 
to turn stones into bread, in order to relieve the 
cravings of hunger within him, and announces 
clearly that man must submit to the natural 
ordinances of God ; he declines also to cast 
himself down from the pinnacle of the temple, 
and to make an empty show by saving himself 
from the natural consequences ; and he declares 
that, to act otherwise, would be a tempting of 
God. We can see a reason, I think, wdiy he 
should not have come down from the cross when 
his persecutors demanded it ; for, had he come 
down, man must have sunk into the depths of 
perdition. But, no doubt, he had equally pro- 
found and cogent reasons, in other cases, for 
refusing to interfere with those normal arrange- 
ments of things which the Godhead, and he in 
the Godhead, had made in the depths of eternity. 
There were evidently rules laid down by him in 
infinite wisdom as to the dispensation of mira- 
culous powers. The disciples ask him why they 
were defeated in their attempts to dispossess a 
person labouring under demoniacal influence, 
and he tells them it was because of their unbe- 
lief, and adds, " howbeit this kind goeth not out 



240 THE SYSTEM IN 

but by prayer and fasting" (Matt. xvii. 21). It 
is said of him, that when he went into his own 
country, " he could not do many mighty works 
there because of their unbelief." Not. surely, 
that it was physically impossible for him to do 
so, but because there were rules of wisdom 
according to which he dispensed, or allowed to 
be dispensed, his supernatural gifts ; and it was 
one rule, that there must be faith on the part 
of the worker, if need be, to the extent of engag- 
ing in special fasting and prayer, and faith, too, 
on the part of the recipient, faith proceeding on 
what Jesus had already done as the ground of new 
favours. 

It is clear, from his whole manner of acting, 
that to Jesus the natural and the supernatural 
are alike possible and alike easy — alike natural 
if we may so speak. Yet he is ever restraining 
himself in the outgoings of his miraculous 
energy. He is like the man of large wealth and 
large benevolence, who could ahvays give charity, 
but does not always do so ; giving so often as to 
shew that he is always disposed to give, and with- 
holding only when he has good reasons, — very 
commonly in the circumstances or character of 
the applicant, and because mischief would follow. 
So it is with Jesus ; we see that there is all 
power in him, but that he is ever keeping back 
the supernatural exercise out of respect to the 



THE SUPERNATURAL. 241 

natural, which is his own ordinance ; and out of 
respect to mankind, who understand the natural, 
and must gather their ordinary instruction and 
blessings through it ; and out of respect to his 
own disciples, who must not he allowed to expect 
that the supernatural will take the place of the 
natural in the common affairs of life; and because 
he ever expected faith, — as the benevolent man 
expects gratitude in the measure of the favours 
bestowed. 

It would be a great inistake to suppose that 
the miracles, wrought by Moses and the prophets 
in the Old Testament times, or by Christ and his 
Apostles in New Testament times, were meant 
merely to show the Divine power, or to act as 
evidences of the truth of religion. He who takes 
this narrow and exclusive view, will find himself 
in hopeless difficulties when he w^ould under- 
stand the miracles ; for he would see on the one 
hand, that all the supernatural acts performed 
were not specially evidences of the truth of reve- 
lation, and on the other hand, that our Lord 
often refused to perform miraculous acts which 
would have been proof of his Divine power. 

The extravagant statements in regard to mira- 
cles, by certain defenders of Christianity, in the 
two or three last ages, have led some in our day 
to depreciate them altogether as evidences. This 
I reckon a very unjustifiable reaction, which has 



242 TEE SYSTEM IN 

led the parties into a very unwise and unsafe 

position. For in the Word of God miracles 

are appealed to in proof of the supernatural 

power of Jesus, and of the truth of the doctrines 

which he taught. Nicodemus comes to Jesus 

as a teacher sent from God, on the avowed 

ground that no man could do the miracles 

which Jesus did except God were with him. 

When the Baptist sent two of his disciples to 

ask of Jesus if he were the Messiah, "Jesus 

answered and said unto them. Go and shew 

John again those things which ye do hear and 

see; the blind receive their sight and the lame 

walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, 

the dead are raised up and the poor have the 

Gospel preached to them " (Matt. xi. 4, 5). 

" The works which the Father hath given me 

to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness 

of me that the Father hath sent me" (John v. 36). 

" The works that I do in my Father's name, they 

bear witness of me " (John x. 25). " Believe 

the works, that ye may know and believe that 

the Father is in me, and I in him" (x. 38). He 

requires us to believe him " for the very works' 

sake" (John xiv. 11). " And many other signs 

truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, 

which are not written in this book ; but these 

are written that ye may believe that Jesus is 

the Christ, the Son of God ; and that beheving 



TEE STTFERNATURAL. 243 

ye may have life through his name" (John xx. 
30, 31). It has been said, that the apostles ap- 
pealed to miracles only before rude and unlettered 
people ; but in speaking to the men of Athens 
of the resurrection of the dead and of the judg- 
ment day, Paul declares, " whereof he hath 
given assurance unto all men, in that he hath 
raised him from the dead" (Acts xvii. 31). In 
order to have the circle of witnesses complete 
when Judas fell, it was ordered, that of those 
men which had companied with the other dis- 
ciples, " all the time Jesus went out and in 
among us, beginning from the baptism of John 
until that same day he was taken up from us, 
must one be ordained to be a witness with us of 
the resurrection" (Acts i. 21, 22). 

He who leaves the supernatural element out 
of Christ's life is abandoning his cause, and if he 
be a professed defender of Christianity, he is 
betraying it. If the writers of the Gospel his- 
tory be true men, as they certainly seem, Jesus 
must have performed actions far beyond the 
power of nature — for example, if there be any 
truth in their statements, he must have risen 
from the grave. If they be not true men, but 
mere inditers of myths, our faith in Jesus as a 
reality is gone. Men of common sense, in every 
walk of life, see this at once ; nor will it be pos- 
sible for those who have set them sliding on the 



244 TEE SYSTEM IN 

downward scale, to stop them in their descent. 
Nor would the supposed miracles be any proof of 
the Divine Mission of Jesus, were they merely 
portents — that is, curious natural phenomena, 
seized by knowing men to favour their own ends. 
Once look upon them as in any sense ingenious 
deceptions — such as that which Columbus played 
upon ignorant men when he predicted an eclipse 
— and our faith in revelation is shaken to its foun- 
dation, with nothing left on which to rebuild it. 
Once admit that there is studious concealment 
or trickery of any kind, and every honest feeling 
within us insists, that those who employed this 
cannot have had the authority of the God of 
truth. 

But while the works performed by Jesus are 
certainly evidences of the Divinity of his mis- 
sion, we must also regard them in other lights 
and as serving other ends. The supernatural 
events of the New Testament go by three dif- 
ferent names, each of which represents them 
under a different aspect. Peter represented 
Jesus as " a man approved of God among you 
by powers and wonders and signs" {huvaiMtct %ai 
Tipafff Kai GTifxsioig, Acts ii. 22). They are called 
" powers," as expressive of the mighty power 
at work. They are called " wonders," because 
they summoned and legitimately commanded 
attention. They are also called " signs," as 



THE STIPEMNATUEAL. 



245 



significant of something beyond themselves, as 
manifestations of a Divine operation and as 
evidence that God is giving his sanction. The 
'' powers, vv^onders, and signs " v^rought by Jesus 
Christ were hke his discourses, the expression 
of his full character, of his power no doubt, but 
also of his wisdom and his love. I believe they 
were a " type" or '' sign" of his special mission. 

It is a circumstance worthy of being noted 
and pondered, that by far the greater number of 
the miracles performed by Jesus Christ when he 
was on earth consisted in the healing of diseases. 
Not that they were exclusively of this description. 
They ranged over a large portion of the wide 
domains of nature. His birth was announced 
by an angel ; when he was born a company of 
the heavenly host appeared to shepherds on the 
plains of Bethlehem ; at his baptism the heavens 
were opened ; at his command winds and waves 
were hushed, a fig tree withered away, a herd of 
swine ran headlong into the sea, and fishes filled 
the nets of the Apostles ; Moses and Elias con- 
versed with him on the mount of transfiguration; 
an angel was seen strengthening him in the 
garden of Gethsemane ; he expired amid con- 
vulsions of nature ; an earthquake threw open 
the sepulchre on the morning of the resurrec- 
tion ; and at last the heavens received him as he 
ascended into glory. Still, by far the greater 



246 TEE SYSTEM IN 

number of his signs and wonders were " powers" 
of healing, and to them he referred when the 
disciples of the Baptist were sent to inquire if he 
were the Messiah (Mat. xi. 5). The question 
arises, wdiy were his miracles usually of this 
character ? 

1 . In this way . our Lord shewed his bene- 
volence as well as his power. His '' powers" 
were not displayed in such acts as in making 
rivers run back to their sources; or in causing 
the heavenly bodies to wander from their spheres, 
or in spreading wasting and destruction. How 
different in their whole spirit and character are 
the miracles of Jesus, from those attributed to 
Simon Magus, who was reported to have shewn 
walking statues, to have made dogs of brass and 
stone to bark, and mountains to leap, while he 
himself flew through the air. Our Lord came 
not to destroy men's lives, but to save ; and his 
*' powers" consisted mainly, in remedying the 
evils existing on our earth, specially in healing 
those who were afflicted w^ith bodily maladies. 
He thus accomplished, as God commonly does in 
his providence, two ends by one and the same 
means: — he showed that he came to this earth 
gifted with Divine power ; but he shewed too, 
that he came filled with Divine Love. 

2. Our Lord's miracles were typical. He came 
to restore order where disorder had prevailed ; 



THE SUPEBNATURAL. 



247 



and it was most significant that his chief works 
should have consisted in remedying evils, spe- 
cially in giving health to the diseased. His 
miracles were thus expressions of his wisdom 
and prescience, as well as of his love and power. 
They were after the model or form of his general 
office and mission ; they were ensamples of the 
power which he has exercised in all ages, and 
which he is exercising in this, in delivering the 
souls of men from the dominion of sin — " Who 
forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy 
diseases." 

The diseases which Christ cured may he re- 
garded as typical of the spiritual maladies healed 
by him. Sin is to the soul what disease is to the 
body. Disease is to man the fruit of sin — of 
which every one must have felt it to be an ex- 
pressive outward image. Disease springs from 
a derangement of the organs — it hinders the 
proper exercise of the functions ; disease is 
death begun, death is disease finished. So sin 
is a disease in the soul ; " when lust hath con- 
ceived it bringeth forth sin, and sin, when it is 
finished, bringeth forth death." All men are 
under sin, just as all men are liable to disease. 
But in what^a variety of ways may the disease 
which wastes and finally destroys the body attack 
us ; it may come in the loss of some of the bodily 
senses, in the quenching of the eye, or the stop- 



248 THE SYSTEM IN 

ping of the ear ; it may come in the lameness of 
an arm or limb ; in the paralysis which deprives 
an essential member at once of all power of 
action ; it may come as fever, drinking up the 
strength by its heat, or as brain malady, which 
makes the very intellect to reel and stagger. 
The sin which assails all, may come in a like di- 
versity of forms. Let no one congratulate him- 
self in the idea that he is not a sinner, because 
he has not fallen into every possible sin. The 
self righteous man boasts that he is not immoral, 
and the drunkard that he is not dishonest. 
It is as if a man were to boast that he is in 
health because his limbs are whole, when con- 
sumption may have begun its wasting process in 
a vital organ. As all men are under spiritual 
disease, so all men need a soul physician, and 
such we have in Him who, when on earth, 
" healed all manner of sickness, and all manner 
of disease among the people." 

We may regard the varied modes in which 
persons seeking a cure came to Jesus when on 
earth, as typical of the ways in which the sinner 
should draw nigh to the Saviour. There were 
commonly means of some kind employed, by 
those who had their infirmities healed by Jesus. 
They had heard somehow or other of him and 
his miraculous power, they were impressed with 
then' need of some one to deliver them from 



THE SUPERNATURAL. 



249 



their maladies, and they were led to believe that 
Jesus could do this. So far all were alike. In 
other respects they differed, — very much I suppose 
according to the natural character and tempera- 
ment of the individual, and the circumstances in 
which he was placed. Some, when they heard 
he was approaching, laid their case before him 
as he passed. Others sought him out when he 
was yet at a distance. Some were not able 
to come to him themselves because of their lame- 
ness, or sickness, or palsy, but they secured 
friends who carried them to him on couches. 
Some cried to him with loud importunity, as 
feeling the urgency of their case. Thus the two 
blind men begging by the way side, when they 
heard that Jesus passed by, cried out, and when 
the multitude rebuked them they would not 
hold their peace, but " cried out the more, 
saying. Have mercy on us, Lord, thou Son of 
David" (Matt. xx. 31). Others, it may be, not 
less anxious and confiding, were more bashful 
and retiring. The centurion, whose servant was 
sick, believing strongly in the power of Jesus, 
and deeply impressed with his own unworthiness 
to receive Jesus under his roof, beseeched him 
to go no farther, but only to speak the word, 
when his servant would be healed. The woman 
who had been labouring under an issue of blood 
so many years, durst not venture to address him, 



250 



THE SYSTEM IN 



but concluded, that if she had but faith to touch 
the hem of his garment she might be instantly 
restored. Some, as they pleaded, dwelt upon 
the dreadful nature of their complaint, and their 
cry was for mercy ; others gave a fuller expres- 
sion to their faith and confidence. " If thou 
wilt, thou canst make me clean." " Speak the 
word only, and my servant shall be healed." 

Such cases recorded for our benefit are deeply 
instructive, both in their sameness and in their 
differences. It is in much the same way that 
sinners still draw nigh to Jesus. They have 
heard of him with the hearing of the ear, and 
they have felt, to a greater or less extent, their 
need of him ; some having had a deep sense of 
the evil of sin generally ; others having felt 
acutely the evil involved in some particular sin ; 
while a third class, perhaps, have been more 
alarmed for the dreadful consequences which 
may follow, in this world or the world to come. 
They have all been led, too, to believe in Christ's 
power to save, and his willingness to save. 
So far all are alike. But there may be diffe- 
rences in the way in which different persons 
approach him. Some wait for him very dili- 
gently in the use of means ; not that they trust 
in the means, but they look for him as they use 
the means, and are found standing at the posts 
of his gates, and in the paths which he is wont 



THE SUPERNATURAL. 251 

to frequent. Others are almost impatient of 
means ; not that they despise means, but they 
rise instantly above them, to Him who alone can 
remove their maladies. Some, afraid of giving 
offence, stand afar off and beat upon their breast, 
saying — '' God be merciful to me a sinner." 
Some under a deep sense of sin, and an awful 
fear of the wrath of God, cry out in terrible 
earnestness for mercy; others enter at once into 
the enjoyment of peace. Some give a fuller ex- 
pression to their sense of sin, and their fear of 
hell ; others, all along, give a higher place to the 
outpourings of confidence and love. But what- 
ever be the lesser differences, they all- come to 
Him, of whom they are sure that he can and will 
heal their maladies. 

The manner in which Jesus healed diseases 
is typical of the way in which he saves and 
sanctifies. In the case of all the cure was 
effected by the power of Jesus ; but there was 
a diversity in the manner of his action. Some- 
times he answered the cry of distress at once — " I 
will be thou clean," and immediately the disease 
was removed. At other times there was delay 
before the prayer was granted : thus the woman 
of Canaan had to submit to repeated refusals, 
and had to put up repeated requests, ere the 
gracious words were addressed to her — " Be it 
unto thee even as thou wilt" (Mat. xv, 21 — 38). 



252 



THE SYSTEM IN 



In some cases he granted the request without 
requiring the person to undertake any work, or 
undergo any process ; he speaks the word and 
the cure is effected. In other cases a step has to 
be taken, a means used, an operation performed. 
Thus he said to the ten lepers, Go shew your- 
selves unto the priests, and it was *' as they went 
they were cleansed" (Luke xvii. 14). When they 
brought to him the man with an impediment in 
his speech, " he took him aside from the multi- 
tude, and put his fingers into his ears, and he 
spit, and touched his tongue ; and looking up to 
heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephpha- 
tha, that is, be opened, and straightway his ears 
were opened, and the string of his tongue was 
loosed, and he spake plain" (Mark vii. 32 — 35). 
It was thus, too, that he acted towards the blind 
man of Bethsaida. " He took the blind man by 
the hand, and led him out of the town ; and 
when he had spit on his eyes, and put his hands 
on him, he asked him if he saw ought ? And he 
looked up, and said, ' I see men as trees walking.' 
After that he put his hands again upon his eyes, 
and made him look up ; and he was restored, 
and saw every man clearly" (Mark viii. 22 — ^^25). 
On another occasion he used a more elaborate 
means, but still not a process of itself fitted to 
effect the end. In curing a blind man " he spat 
on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and 



THE SUPERNATURAL. 



253 



he anointed the eyes of the hhnd man with the 
clay, and said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of 
Siloam (which is, by interpretation. Sent); he 
went his way, therefore, and washed, and came 
seeing" (John ix. 6, 7). I believe that there is 
a like sameness, and a like diversity in the man- 
ner in which God converts the sinner. Some- 
times he does the work at once, in the fulness 
of his grace. In other cases he delays granting 
the prayer of the anxious inquirer ; not that he 
would make him cease from prayer, but he would 
thereby make him plead more earnestly. Some- 
times he seems to require nothing to be done ; on 
other occasions he bids him go and do this and 
do that, and as he does it the cure is performed. 
" There are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit;- 
and there are differences of administration, but 
the same Lord ; and there are diversities of ope- 
rations, but it is the same God which worketh all 
in all." 

The effect produced is always health and acti- 
vity. When Jesus put forth his power, the eye 
which had been blind saw ; the ear which had 
been deaf heard ; he who had been sick arose ; 
he who had been leprous had his flesh made 
fresh and whole ; he who had been torn with 
demons, sat at the feet of his deliverer clothed and 
in his right mind. It is the same when the soul 
is converted and sanctified. The organs which 



254 THE SYSTEAI IN 

had been distempered are made whole; the 
functions that had been disturbed act aright ; 
and with the hfe there will be activity — activity 
in the service of God, activity in doing good, 
activity in relieving distress, in lessening prevail- 
ing sins, and in promoting the extension of the 
Eedeemer's kingdom. When the fever of 
Peter's wife's mother was subdued, she " arose 
and ministered" to Jesus. Those that were 
brought to Christ on couches, he sent away 
bearing their couches by means of the strength 
imparted to them. Those who are brought to 
Christ lame, he sends away leaping, and exer- 
cising and invigorating the powers they have re- 
ceived in running in the ways of his command- 
ments. Those who come to Christ blind, he 
sends away beholding and admiring the glory of 
his person and his works. Those who come to 
Christ dum.b, he sends away with their tongues 
loosed, and exercising their newly acquired gifts 
in singing his praises. 

If we had been privileged to accompany Jesus 
in some of his earthly journeys, what a glorious 
sight would we have seen, — not, indeed, such as 
this w^orld wonders at and admires, when it ap- 
plauds the warrior cutting down and destroying 
the strong and healthy men before him, — we 
would have witnessed a very different, but a far 
.grander scene. We should have seen before him, 



THE SUPERNATURAL. 255 

as he was about to pass, the road covered with 
couches, with the sick laid out upon them ; and 
the dumb, when they could not speak, striving to 
give expression to their woes by their earnest 
struggles ; and the blind, when they could not 
see, crying to be taken to him. This was the 
scene before him ; and behind him, after he had 
passed, were the sick bearing away their couches, 
and the lame leaping like the harts, and the 
dumb singing his praises, and the blind looking 
after him with joyful eyes, and the lunatic in 
their right minds, and those lately dead in the 
embraces of their friends. These were the 
effects which followed Christ's visits wherever he 
went. And he is Jesus Christ, the same yester- 
day, to-day, and forever. His office is still to 
seek and to save that which was lost. He is in 
this world now by his Spirit, as he once was by 
his bodily presence. True, he is not to be dis- 
cerned by any pomp or external splendour ; " the 
kingdom of God cometh not with observation." 
But, by the eye of faith, we may discern him still 
going about in our world, and continually doing 
good. Before him are persons inflicted with all 
manner of spiritual maladies : — some under the 
power of wild passion, by which they are led 
captive at pleasure ; some covered all over with 
the leprosy of vice ; all of them blind to the per- 
ception of spiritual beauty, and deaf to the voice 



256 THE SYSTEM IN 

of God addressed to them. Wherever Christ goes 
the way is strewn with such ; and wherever he 
goes he leaves behind him the traces of his pre- 
sence. Before him, as he marches through our 
world, are the blind, the deaf, the dying, and the 
dead ; and behind him are the seeing, the hear- 
ing, the living, the lively, and the loving. '*The 
Spirit of the Lord God is upon me ; because the 
Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings 
unto the meek : he hath sent me to bind up the 
broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the cap- 
tive, and the opening of the prison to them that 
are bound ; to proclaim the acceptable year of 
the Lord." 



SECT. VI.— THE SYSTEM OF DOCTRINE. 

The mind of man begins its intelhgent acts, 
not with the general and the abstract, but with 
the singular and the concrete ; not with prin- 
ciples and with qualities, but with individual 
objects as they present themselves, and in the 
exercise of their properties. The boy does not 
set out in his mental activities with speculating 
like a logician about man and his rationality and 
responsibility ; but he forms a familiar acquaint- 
ance with his nurse, and his mother, and his 
father, and he feels the force of a command as 



THE SUPERNATURAL. 257 

Tittered by them, and his first reasoning may be 
to the effect, that if he would obtain a gift from 
them, he should make known his wants by some 
audible symbol. When this same boy begins 
to exercise his faculties about religion, which he 
may be led to do in very early life, he does not 
set out with abstract doctrines about God and 
his attributes ; but, if he is blessed with Chris- 
tian parents, he commences with an apprehen- 
sion of God as living and loving and acting, and 
of Jesus Christ as suffering and dying on earth, 
and now up in the heavens ready to do good to 
him and to all. It is as persons advance in life 
and in intelligence, that they learn to compre- 
hend and admire the separate qualities that meet 
in the individual person, and the general rule 
which brings the miscellaneous objects into a 
unity of view and conception. The abstract 
principle, and the general rule, when they are 
apprehended, keep the intellect steady, and they 
guard it from much seductive error, into which 
those fall who mistake the accidental for the 
universal. It should be added, that this good 
is gained only when the abstractions and gene- 
ralizations have been properly made ; for we 
may be landed in confusion and in very fatal 
errors if the facts have been mutilated in the 
logical process, or the law be any thing more 
than a generalization of the individual cases. 



258 THE SYSTEM US' 

The great body of mankind do not much rehsh 
highly generahzed laws or abstract dogmas ; they 
understand the principle best when it comes 
to them as an exemplification — they prefer the 
living being to the bony skeleton. This is the 
case with the young ; with not only children, but 
young men and maidens who compose so large a 
portion of every community; with the uncivilized 
who, even at this day, constitute by far the greater 
number of the inhabitants of the earth ; with, I 
believe, even the majority of the cultivated and 
refined, who turn with more eagerness to the 
tale in our libraries than to the scientific or 
philosophic treatise. In conformity with all 
this, we find doctrinal propositions and refined 
distinctions constituting a comparatively small 
part of Scripture, which instructs us more fre- 
quently by narratives, poems, precepts, prophe- 
cies, symbols, threatenings, judgments, promises, 
parables, and examples. But all who can under-, 
stand it are the better of having the rule as well 
as the illustration ; and there are thinking minds 
in all ages and states of society, and grades of 
life, which can apprehend general truths and 
profit by them, and the number of persons 
craving for such instruction increases rapidly as 
education advances ; and so we have doctrinal 
statements here and there in all the Scriptures, 
but more especially in the Epistles of Paul, 



TEE SVPER2TATURAL. 



259 



written when revealed truth was addressed to 
those whose mmds had been cuhivated by Greek 
Hterature and philosophy. 

There is, undoubtedly, a system of doctrine 
underlying all the scattered, and the at times 
apparently isolated, revelations of the will of 
God; underlying the whole ordinances and dis- 
pensations of Scripture, the very history and 
poetry, the expostulation and exhortation. Paul 
speaks of the Komans as obeying the type of 
doctrine which was delivered unto them (Rom. 
vi. 7), and exhorts Timothy to hold fast the 
under- type of sound words which he had heard 
(2 Tim. i. 13). It is not needful that every 
private Christian should have a full compre- 
hension of this system, or be able to expound it 
in categorical propositions. Many have caught 
its spirit, and been able practically to conform to 
it, without knowing it speculatively; just as the 
great mass of mankind can so far accommodate 
themselves to natural law without knowing it 
scientifically — are quite aware, for example, that 
a stone will fall to the ground, though they 
are entirely ignorant of Newton's law of uni- 
versal gravitation. But there is a set of con- 
nected principles binding the whole series of 
supernatural dispensations and the scattered 
declarations of the Word, just as there is a 
Divine idea or plan running through the whole 



260 



TEE SYSTEM IN 



mundane system, through all its stellar move- 
ments and organic forms. By a careful and 
cautious inquisition of nature we can make it 
reveal some of its secret machhiery ; and we are 
quite sure that we have discovered not a few of 
the laws of the world, though we should never 
pretend that we have found out all its laws or 
its ultimate laws. By a like reverent study of 
the revelations of God we may rise to very en- 
larged conceptions of the plan of redemption ; 
and we may be quite sure that these are sub- 
stantially correct ; though we should ever beware 
of stating or averring that we have embraced the 
whole truth in our systems. We are greatly 
aided in this by those generalized statements, 
combining a vast number of other and more 
particular statements into one, wdiich are pre- 
sented every where in the Word, but become 
more numerous in the later Scriptures. 

The improper and excessive application of 
the forms of human logic (and this often a very 
doubtful and technical logic) to the expression 
of Divine truth, has tempted many in our day 
to turn away with strong distaste from all sys- 
tematic or dogmatic theology. This I regard 
as a most unwarranted reaction, from the exces- 
sive refinements and minute distinctions of the 
scholastic and of certain portions of the puritan 
theology. I admit, at once, that the human 



THE SUPERNATURAL. 



261 



mind cannot systematize all spiritual truth, just 
as it cannot arrange all natural truth. Those 
divines shew their ignorance and presumption, 
and not their knowledge or wisdom, who profess 
to give us the whole system or body of divinity. 
It hath not entered into the mind of man to 
conceive the body of divine truth in its vast 
dimensions ; and certainly no one should attempt 
to give a full portraiture, so as to delineate all 
its significant features, and the iridescent play 
of feeling on them, and its agile but complex 
movements. I doubt much whether we have 
attained a full comprehension of any one truth 
of revelation or of nature ; and preposterous it 
is, in the extreme, for any one to affirm that he 
had mastered all truth. An inspired apostle 
acknowledges, " We know in part, and we pro- 
phesy in part." But while we know only in 
part we do know in part, and prophets have 
prophesied in part. By the ordinary exercise 
of our observational and reflecting faculties, 
we can discover analogies, affinities, and con- 
nexions, and we can generalize what we notice, 
and express the laws which we reach; but all 
the while we should not dogmatically affirm that 
we have risen to the ultimate or the absolute 
truth. Everywhere have we exemplifications so 
clear an 1 simple, that they enable us at once to 
catch the rule or principle, which again entitles 



262 



THE SYSTEM IN 



US to make important practical applications. 
Here and there do we see regular arcs of revolv- 
ing wheels, from which we may calculate the 
whole circle. Any one may discern the general 
type of doctrine, at first with a very dim outline, 
but coming out more and more distinctly in the 
clearer light. Above all, we have in the Word 
of God itself, and especially in the writings of 
Paul and John, doctrinal statements in the form 
of epitomes, or compendious declarations of vast 
sweep and comprehensiveness. 

I admit that these abstracts (like the abstracts 
of science) are felt to be exceedingly bare and 
uninteresting when they are presented to a mind 
ignorant of the individual and the concrete — 
indeed they are scarcely comprehensible by one 
who has not, in his previous training, had the 
means of imaging them and thinking of them by 
incident or by symbol. They are rarely pre- 
sented to us in the early and preparatory revela- 
tions, which give, us instead the example, the 
figure, the parable, the analogy. They have a 
value when they follow up a course of instruction 
conducted by deeds and symbols, and gather into 
a head, and express in a general law, the results 
of the whole preceding process of training, ob- 
servation, and thought. Thus employed, they 
serve a purpose, and a high purpose, to the church 
and individuals. Those abstracts of cardinal 



TEE SUPEEKATURAL. 263 

truths which are emhodied in our creeds and 
confessions, are standards of weight and measure, 
by which to detect unsound doctrine, and keep 
it from passing current in the visible churches. 
The simple and clear enunciations presented in 
our catechisms assist the young to rise to a clear 
notion of what they are expected to believe ; and 
may serve, in all their future lives, to give a con- 
nexion to the individual truths offered to them. 
The grand general views presented in sermons 
and religious treatises, more especially when 
couched in language borrowed from Scripture or 
conceived in its spirit, may furnish an elevated 
theme of religious meditation ; may save us from 
theoretical errors and practical mistakes ; and un- 
consciously render our piety more enlightened 
in its spirit and more consistent in its action. 

It must needs be one of the labours of the 
theologians of our day, to disentangle our syste- 
matic divinity from all metaphysical subtleties, 
from all antiquated jurisprudence, and from all 
logical distinctions, other than the most obvious 
and natural. This is a task which I would not 
commit to every one. There is a risk, that those 
who set about it most eagerly, in gathering up 
the tares root up also the wheat with them. 
Still it is a work in which those who are compe- 
tent must engage ; for it is certain that " every 
plant which our heavenly Father hath not 



264 



THE SYSTEM Z2V 



planted shall be rooted up" (Mat. xv. 13) ; and it 
is surely better that the encumbrances should 
be taken out of the way by the friends than by 
the foes of religion. What could look more tho- 
roughly established than the cosmogony which 
divines, till within the last age or two, were 
in the habit of drawing from the earlier chapters 
of Genesis? Yet we have been obhged to re- 
view it ; and we now discover how many infe- 
rences of our own were superadded to the simple 
statements of the Word. Physical science has 
thus given a reproof and a lesson to systematic 
theology, which it should seek to profit by, in 
the way of making it more humble and less con- 
structive in its dogmas. I suspect that higher 
intelligences may discover quite as many flaws in 
our logical or inferential systems of doctrine, as 
there w^ere in the old theological geology. But 
just because theology must take down some of its 
additions which were supposed to be buttresses, 
while they were really obstructions, it is the more 
needful to watch, lest, in the work of upturning, 
it undermine any j^art of the heavenly temple. 
Care also must be taken, that in removing the 
old impediments we do not allow any new logic 
or philosophy, — be it the more imposing theories 
of Schleiermacher or Coleridge, or the more 
rigid but negative systems of Kant or Ha- 
milton, — to take their place, and thus accu- 



THE 8UFERNATUEAL. 



265 



mulate a Herculean task of cleansing for the 
generation that is to come after. And while 
we exclude all inventions of man from theo- 
logy proper, as supposed to have the sanction 
of inspiration, it would be infatuation to refuse 
to employ, as an outward defence, any of those 
well-founded distinctions and apt phrases which 
theologians have called in to shew how Divine 
truth is consistent with itself, and to answer 
plausible objections. Nor is there any reason 
why a philosophy should not seek to sanctify 
itself by an alliance with religion ; provided 
always that it does not attempt, like the great 
German systems of Schelling and Hegel, to 
overpower the simple truths of the Word ; and 
provided, farther, it does not so identify itself 
with religion, that when the philosophy is seen to 
be a failure, Christianity may be supposed to fall 
along with it. 

But, without leaning upon any philosophy ex- 
cept the philosophy of good sense, or any logic 
except the logic which all men employ in every 
mental exercise, or any jurisprudence except that 
of the spontaneous conscience, it is possible to 
trace a connexion among many of the truths of 
the Word, and to give them a suitable expression. 
We see in Kevelation, first of all, an eternal 
counsel contemplating a manifestation of the 
Divine glory — that is, of the Divine perfections — 



266 



THE SYSTEM IN 



in providing a Saviour for man fallen into sin 
and degradation. From the very entrance of 
transgression into our world there are notices of 
him ; and there are intimations that he is to 
descend from human nature, while yet he is re- 
lated to the Divine nature, which is essentially 
one and yet plural. Various anticipations of him 
appear; a symbolic mode of worship is insti- 
tuted ; profound ideas and convictions are excited 
and deepened ; a special family is chosen to pre- 
serve and transmit the knowledge and concep- 
tions ; and along with these a pure morality in 
a somewhat rigid and ceremonial form. As ages 
advance, the spirit shines more and more clearly 
through the body in which it dwells. In the 
fulness of time the long-predicted and anticipated 
One appears, very God and very Man ; the Re- 
vealer of the will of God and the teacher of man- 
kind; the Redeemer who makes atonement and 
who conquers by suffering ; the King, who rides 
lowly into our world, and who is at last to conquer 
it all in the name of " truth, and meekness, 
and righteousness." We see that he is calling 
a people, who are all being sanctified by him, 
and are thus prepared for an inheritance in 
which the holy shall be forever separated from 
the unholy. Ever spreading wider and wider the 
boundaries of his spiritual kingdom on earth, and 
reducing the rebelhous elements into order, his 



THE SUPERNATURAL. 



2G7 



reign shall at last extend over the whole earth, 
apparently for a long succession of ages. A plan 
like this evidently underlies the whole super- 
natural dispensations ; and it has within it a set 
of agencies which, though unseen because of 
their depth by superficial men, have yet, in fact, 
formed the elevations and depressions, and by 
consequence the whole shape, and contour, and 
aspect of our world's history. 



SECT. VII.— THE SYSTEM OF DUTY. 

There is evidently a type of duty running 
through the whole revelation of God, and under- 
lying all its particular precepts. It is, to a 
considerable extent, coincident with a prior and 
a natural law, imbedded in the very constitution 
of man. Not that we are to look on the law 
written on the heart of man as rendering the 
law written in the Word unnecessary. For, 
first the law of conscience is felt by the great 
body of mankind to be very vague in its instruc- 
tions. The inscription may at first have been 
sharp and clear, as it must certainly have been 
deep, to outstand all that man has passed 
through, as the soul has been swept over by sin 
as by a flood. In fact, the moral power in man 
exists very much in the form of a capacity and a 



268 



THE SYSTE3I IN 



tendency rather than an energy, and it needs 
a favour ahle training to bring it into healthy 
exercise ; it needs a revealed law applied to it 
to make the invisible writing legible. The 
advanced conscience of these times is, no doubt, 
the outgrowth of native principle, otherwise cir- 
cumstances could not call it out ; still it is also a 
growth produced by external stimuli, and chiefly 
by the light which has been diffused every where 
throughout our atmosphere by a heavenly lumi- 
nary- — many in our cloudy world never perceiving 
the source from which it comes. 

Much of what is revealed, it may be admitted, 
is a republication of the law of nature — it being 
understood, however, that what is now published 
clearly had been published only obscurely before. 
We have such a law in the Old Testament, 
where, however, it appears in a somewhat rigid 
form and with a considerably stern lool, and 
without those more loving features which attract 
us in the New Testament ; we hear it spoken in 
the midst of flames, we see it written on stone, 
and all its commandments are prohibitive. It is 
in the New Testament, — more especially in the 
Sermon . on the Mount, and other discourses of 
our Lord, and in portions i the Epistles, — that 
we see what is the spirit of the Law, and what 
the principle which underlies it. " Thou shalt 
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and 



THE SUPERNATURAL. 



269 



with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This 
is the first and great commandment. And the 
second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neigh- 
bour as thyself. On these two commandments 
hang all the law and the prophets" (Matt. xxii. 
37 — 40). In favour of this law the natural 
conscience gives its testimony; it is the fully 
written and preserved copy, which enables us to 
read the dimmed and defaced one, which, how- 
ever, suffices to shew that the revealed law 
corresponds to the natural and original one. 

But in this law revealed in the Bible there is 
something beyond what is in the natural law of con- 
science, that which is superinduced being all the 
while in thorough harmony with what is written 
on our nature. There is, fqr example, a gracious 
law of the Sabbath, providing periodical rest for a 
body which has to toil, and also securing, as still 
more important, indeed essential to the sustain- 
ing of religion in a land, a season for the acqui- 
sition of religious knowledge, and for religious 
education and training generally among young 
and old, and a time of blessed quiet in which the 
soul may hold undistracted communion with God. 
But the specialty of the code of duty revealed 
in the Bible lies in its clearly announcing 
what we ought to do, as sinners turning from 
sin, and returning to God. Even at this point, 
the revealed law has something to appeal to in 



270 THE SYSTEM IN 

the natural conscience, which is prepared to 
admit that man has sinned, and that he ought to 
repent and amend. But then the conscience 
has no special information nor instruction, no 
assurance or promise for the returning sinner, 
and the reason is, that it knows of no method of 
reconcilement with God. It is upon the me- 
diatorial work made known by the supernatural 
revelation, that all the evangelical duties proceed, 
•and these duties are all graces — such as faith, 
and repentance, and meekness, and patience, 
and the love of a reconciled heart. As to repen- 
tance, the natural conscience gives only impulses, 
compunctions, fears, which indeed would stir 
up action, but it utters no certain sound as to 
what should be the course of conduct pursued ; 
and the confused convictions are apt to flow 
out in self-imposed mortifications and penances, 
which are felt, after they have been gone through, 
to be no atonement for the transgression, and so 
bring no peace, but rather restlessness, to the 
roused spirit. As to faith, the natural conscience 
has no object to reveal except God the gover- 
nor and judge, no being standing in such a 
relation towards us, as to draw forth and gain 
and fix our confidence. Instead of gentleness, 
forbearance, patience, the natural feelings raised 
by the accusings of the moral avenger, are 
anxiety, doubt, fretfulness, and resentment. No 



THE SUPERNATURAL. 271 

doubt, the ethical prompter within announces 
that we ought to love, but scarcely holds out any 
incitements to draw our hearts towards a God 
who hates sin, but of whom we know not how 
he forgives sin, or whether he forgives it. It is 
certain that there is no room, no motive, in 
natural religion for what is called evangelical 
love — the love which cleaves to God as a recon- 
ciled God in Christ ; the love which makes the 
Christian feel that, as having received mercy 
himself, he should be merciful to others ; that, as 
having heard the joyful sound himself, he should 
hasten to have it rung in the hearing of all 
others, and particularly of the poor, the igno- 
rant, and the outcast. There is here spread out 
to our view a code of duties, or rather a group of 
graces, altogether peculiar to revealed religion, 
as founded and proceeding upon the revelation 
of a Divine Messenger who comes with overtures 
of peace to sinners. 



SECT. VIII.— THE SYSTEM OF MEANS. 

When man would secure any natural blessing, 
he uses means. If he would reap, he must sow — 
that is, he must scatter in order to gather. 
When he would obtain a competent share of the 
blessings of this world, he is diligent in his call- 



272 



THE SYSTEM IN 



ing. When he would reach a higher knowledge, 
he begins by mastering the elements. If he 
would get love, he must hegin by giving love. 
There are, in like manner, means of obtaining 
hlessings in the kingdom of grace; here, too, 
he who would reap must sow — he who would rise 
to sight must begin by exercising faith. The 
means by which we obtain the common bless- 
ings are, in both kingdoms, very simple and very 
obvious; the most careless may discover them, 
a child may understand them. In the spiritual 
kingdom, he who would obtain the blessings must 
ask them from Him who dispenses them. He 
w^ho would acquire Divine knowledge must read 
the lesson book which the great Prophet of the 
Church has written, and hear those who have 
heen appointed to expound it. There are sym- 
bols of entrance into communion with Christ, 
and symbols of growth in the Divine life, which 
all will be disposed practically to value who 
aspire after admission into the kingdom or 
advancement in it. Those who would obtain 
the spiritual grace will cherish trust and love 
towards Him who is the fountain of grace. - 

" If a flower 
Were thrown you out of heaven at intervals, 
You'd soon attain to a trick of looking up." 

But there are better gifts thrown out from heaven 



THE SUPERNATURAL. 



273 



than flowers ; and those who wish and wait for 
them acquire an upward, a heavenward look. 

In both, the means are usually crowned with 
success. He who continues in the use of them, 
sooner or later secures the blessing. But in 
neither are they certainly successful. He who 
has sown may not reap on the first harvest, nor 
is he sure of reaping every harvest. The diligent 
man may be disappointed in some of the plans 
which he has devised with greatest wisdom, and 
pursued with greatest energy. In like manner, 
he who reads and prays may not get the spiritual 
blessing the moment he asks, nor always when 
he asks. In both kingdoms, God has given suf- 
ficient inducement to the use of means ; but in 
both he has kept the issue in his own hands, 
that all men, and all Christians in particular, 
may feel their dependence on him. 

But, with the general correspondence there is 
a curious point of difference, which illustrates very 
strikingly God's method of accomphshing the 
same end by a difference of means. In both he 
has secured diligence ; in both he has shewn that 
we are, after all, dependent on him. But, while 
these purposes are secured in both cases, there is 
this difference, that, in the kingdom of nature, the 
means accomplish their end by their own natural 
power, and fail only by cross arrangements of Pro- 
vidence which thwart their action and disappoint 

s 



274 



TEE SYSTEM IN 



their issue ; while, in the kingdom of grace, the 
means cannot accomphsh the result, except by the 
immediate indwelling and operation of the Spirit 
of God. In the secular affairs of life, it is of all 
things essential that men use the means, in order 
that the economy of this world may move on, and 
that human activity may supply what mankind 
need ; and all this must be done, whether men 
sinfully trust in the means, or are made to see 
that they need the blessing of heaven upon them. 
But, in the kingdom of grace the end throughout 
is a spiritual one, and men must not be allowed 
to trust in the mere ceremonial, in the 0]^us oper- 
atum ; the Christian must be taught throughout 
that the whole work is of God, and that trust in 
him is an end, as well as a means, in the spiritual 
economy. 



SECT. IX.— THE SYSTEM OF THE DISPENSATION OF GRACE. 

Not only is there system in the objective truths 
and ordinances of God, there is method in the 
manner in which the grace of the Spirit is dis- 
pensed. 

There is plan in the manner in which it is 
imparted to every individual believer. It is an 
active element, introduced among old and oppos- 
ing elements also active. It is likened to leaven 



TEE S TIPERNA TTJEAL, 275 

deposited in the mass and fermenting it. It is 
ordinarily obtained in the use of means, thus 
rendering those who would secure it watchful 
and vigilant. From the very first, it meets with 
obstacles from the corrupt iugredients among 
which it is introduced. Commonly there is a 
great chafing of spirit as convictions lash the 
soul — like as wdnds do the ocean. Often is 
there a violent struggle in the throes of the new 
birth, as pride, and self-righteousness, and 
cherished lusts, oppose the entrance of faith, 
and self-denial, and love — and are defeated. 
The ocean, even when the waves are high, never 
seems to rage in all its fury except at the shore 
where it is opposed by barriers. The deepest 
stream will flow along softly, and almost imper- 
ceptibly, as long as it runs in a smoothly-worn 
channel ; but let there be opposing rocks or 
cliffs, which dash it from one to another, and 
it is forthwith lashed into foam. It is from a 
like cause that Satan and our evil propensities 
never rage so furiously as when the grace of 
God, like a strong and immovable rock, opposes 
itself to the proud waves of the passions. There 
is more or less of a struggle during the whole 
life of the Christian. Hence, the spiritual life 
in the soul of man has ever been felt to be a 
work, in which toil has to be undergone in 
digging and building, and a warfare, in which 



-^^ TEE SYSTEM IK 

there are many foes to contend against. *' The 
flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit 
against the flesh, and these are contrary the one 
to the other." This is a universal description 
of the believer's experience. The feelings of 
the writers of the Psalms are the same as 
those of the apostles ; there is the same wrest- 
ling between two opposite principles, the same 
fears and hopes, the same anxieties and encou- 
ragements, the same defeats and conquests. 
Kead the Confessions of Augustine, the lives or 
letters of the Eeformers, and the diaries of later 
Christians, and there is th^e same sorrowing over 
a remainder of sin, with which there is a contest 
kept up, and which they hope in the end to 
conquer; It is very interesting, and instructive 
wdthal, to observe this uniformity of Christian 
experience ; to observe believers separated from 
each other by so many ages, and living in such 
difierent states of society, so much the same in 
their feelings and in their character. We per- 
ceive that religion is alike in all ages, — the 
same grace of God acting on the same perverse 
nature. 

But in this w^arfare, however doubtful the 
contest may seem at times to be, the spiritual 
power is all along the stronger, and will at last 
be seen to be so, as it gives peace of conscience 
and peace of heart, as it diffuses inward satisfac- 



THE SUFERN'ATVUAL. 



211 



tion, as it puts down heart corruption, as it 
elevates the y/hole motives of hfe and ends of 
being, as it expands and warms the heart by a 
self" forgetting love. It is now seen clearly by 
the Christian that what is thus planted within 
him is not a passing impulse, a floating fancy, 
a notion springing spontaneously, which may 
disappear as speedily, but is a system ; he calls 
it a principle, a life — it is a seed becoming a 
plant, a birth maturing into a full grown being. 
There is evidently a rationale in it throughout, 
though the man may not be able to discover all 
its laws and its reasons ; and he piously ascribes 
the whole to the sovereignty of God, by which 
he does not mean the arbitrariness of God, or the 
capriciousness of God, but the inscrutable wis- 
dom of God, and the goodness of God, who does 
all things wisely and well, but without conde- 
scending to submit his reasons to us. It is part 
of this wise system, that the work of grace is a 
progressive one. Not that the believer is every 
instant advancing in the Divine life. Alas, there 
are times when he feels as if all spiritual life 
within were withering and dying. But even 
then he is like the plant in winter, with some life 
and substance, ready for the first genial approach 
of spring, as '' a teil plant and as an oak, whose 
substance is in them when they cast their leaves, 
so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof," 



278 TEE SYSTEM IN 

and the believer on the whole is making pro- 
gress, just as the healthy and vigorous tree does, 
from year to year. His course is like that of a 
stream, it may at times be a crooked and per- 
plexed one, at times it may seem a backward 
one ; but it is all the while pursuing its way, 
gathering contributions in its very turnings and 
windings, and widening and deepening as it 
moves on. The Christian has often been com- 
pared to a traveller. The traveller, on his way 
to the summit of a mountian, may meet with 
deep valleys, down which he has to descend, in 
order to his farther ascent, but on the whole he is 
rising higher. So it is with the believer ; he may 
meet on his journey with valleys deep and dark 
as those of Baca, but on the whole he is rising 
nearer and nearer to perfection, and as he mounts, 
he breathes a purer and more ethereal atmos- 
phere, and gains a wider and a nobler prospect. 

Comparative anatomists have traced a curious 
general correspondence between the growth of 
the animal in the womb, and the advance of 
animated beings in the geological ages, — there 
being a progression in both cases from the lower 
to the higher, from the more simple and general 
to the more complex and special. I suppose that 
this correspondence arises from there being, in 
both cases, a like living agency acting in like 
circumstances. However this may be, it. is cer- 



TEE SUFERJSfATTTBAL. 279 

tain tbat there is an analogy between the system 
of grace in the heart of the individual, and the 
system of grace in the world. This correspon- 
dence arises from the life in the church being, 
like the life in the heart, a spiritual power in 
the midst of carnal materials. The one^ like the 
other, is commonly conveyed by means, the in- 
struments in the case of the church being com- 
monly men and women, whose hearts have been 
kindled by it into a flame, and who now propa- 
gate the fire. In both, the spiritual power is a 
leaven pervading the circumambient mass — a 
plant meeting obstacles, and overcoming them, 
and ever, in the most unfavourable circumstances, 
seeking and growing towards the light. What a 
ferment in the first instance, when the gospel 
gets an entrance into a land; its disciples are 
everywhere maligned, are often shut up in pri- 
son, or consigned to the flames. All along, the 
church while in the world is a different body 
from the world, which is ever seeking by threats 
or seductions to drive or draw it from its alle- 
giance to Christ. In these circumstances the 
church is often exposed to severe suffering, 
which is allowed to come upon it in the way of 
a chastening — which it deserves, which it needs. 
For how apt is that church to fall asleep when 
it should be active; or to trust in forms and 
ecclesiastical arrangements when it should be 



280 



THE SYSTEM IN 



breathing the hving spirit ; or to drop some of 
the great truths which have been committed to 
its care ; or to neglect certain great duties de- 
volving on it — as for ages it neglected missionary 
effort ; or to waste its energies in fruitless efforts 
— as in mediaeval times in architecture and in 
ritual — or as in these times in the wars of con- 
tending sects. From all these and other causes, 
the church at large needs afflictions, as the pri- 
vate Christian does ; and to keep it from settling 
upon its lees it is emptied from vessel to vessel; 
and offences come to make it feel where its 
strength lies ; and heresies spring up to compel 
it to fall back more implicitly and unreservedly 
upon the revealed truth of God; and lest it 
should waste its energy in an internal strife, it is 
made to see a powerful enemy in front. But in 
spite of all these persecutions, at times in conse- 
quence of them, it is making progress. . Not that 
it is ever progressing, or progressing always at 
the same rate. Its movement is like that of the 
ocean by tides and waves, like that of light by 
vibrations. " We see not yet all things put 
under him," but we see a living power at work 
which shall at last bring all things into subjec- 
tion. In reference to his own personal work on 
earth, Jesus could say ere he expired — " It is 
finished." He can say the same in regard to 
the work which he carries on in the breasts of 



THE SUPERNATURAL. 281 

his people, till all sin is conquered — " It is 
finished." He will at last be able to use the 
same language in regard to the work which he 
is conducting on earth, till the knowledge of the 
Lord covers the earth — " It is finished." 



282 , THE EVIDENCES 



CHAPTER III. 

THE EVIDENCES OF CHEISTIANITY. 

SECT. I.— A STUDY OF THE CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. THE 
EVIDENCES A SYSTEM. 

It was never intended in this Treatise to furnish 
an exposition of the Evidences of Christianity; 
this has heen provided so frequently and so satis- 
factorily in other works that I feel I have nothing 
new to offer. My aim has heen simply to clear 
the ground of incumbrances and obstructions, so 
as to allow us to attend to the instruction : 
" Walk about Zion, and go round about her ; 
tell the towers thereof. Mark ye well her 
bulwarks, consider her palaces ; that ye may tell 
it to the generation following." It has become 
necessary in these days to keep inquiring minds 
from starting, after the manner of the German 
Strauss and the British Baden Powell, with the 
principle that everything that professes to be 
supernatural is to be regarded as opposed to 
reason and the inductive philosophy. I have 
gained the end I had in view — so far as apolo- 



OF CHBISTIANITY. 



283 



getics are concerned — if I set out intelligent 
young men upon the study of the Christian Evi- 
dences, prepared to consider the proof advanced 
as if it were in favour of a natural, and not a su- 
pernatural system. 

The way in which we who live in these times 
and countries arrive at a reasonable belief in the 
Divine origin of Christianity, does not differ es- 
sentially from the manner in which we reach an 
independent conviction of the existence of God. 
In both we may start with certain ideas, and it 
may be prepossessions and educational faiths; but 
we could easily lay these aside — and in these en- 
lightened times would certainly lay them aside — 
were it not that they are authorised, sanctioned, 
and confirmed by what is ever pressing itself 
upon our notice : — in the one case, that of our 
belief in God, by internal principles, founding 
on the obvious traces of order and adaptation in 
the universe; and, in the other, that of our be- 
lief in Christ, by the truths of the Word, and the 
external evidence in its favour, as these recom- 
mend themselves to our moral nature, to our 
felt wants, and to our intelligence. 

Let us exactly estimate the position in which 
a thinking youth finds himself in our land, in 
these times, when he would examine the Chris- 
tian religion and its evidences. He has been 
taught that this rehgion, professed by his parents 



284 



THE EVIDENCES 



and generally by his countrymen, rich and poor, 
learned and unlearned, has come from God. 
He has an acquaintance, more or less particular, 
with the tenets set forth in the Scriptures ; and 
he sees the influence which they exercise on 
society at large, or on individuals. He has 
enough to prevent him from summarily rejecting 
Christianity, aud to make him feel it to be his 
duty to make farther inquiry into the religion 
and its credentials. If he has ever thought on 
the subject of evidence, he will see that, in all 
practical matters, the proof which convinces 
comes from a variety of quarters, and that assent 
is gained by the concurrence of independent 
facts. First, we may suppose he considers 
candidly the doctrines set forth in the written 
record, and he is constrained to acknowledge 
as to many of them, that they are worthy of God, 
as he is made known by inward conscience and 
outward providence, and that they are suited to 
man, to his moral nature, his deeper wants, and 
his position as a being who has to appear at a 
judgment seat. He finds it stated, that the 
Founder of the religion wrought miracles of 
power and mercy, and that he rose from the 
dead ; he does not propose to settle theoretically 
what nature cannot do, and what it can do, but 
he is sure, that if one raised others from the 
dead, or rose himself, the operation is beyond 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 285 

all natural agency. He reads the testimony of 
the witnesses, and sees it to be characterized by 
open and transparent guilelessness, and he feels 
that he should trust it as he does the narratives 
of Herodotus, or Xenophon, or Juhus Csesar, 
as to ancient history ; or of Bruce, of Park, or 
of Livingstone, as to distant countries. He 
finds, too, a series of predictions of a very old 
date, and he compares them with events cer- 
tainly of a later date, and detailed by independent 
annahsts and travellers, and he is constrained 
to discern a correspondence far beyond what 
human sagacity could have foreseen. The evi- 
dence w4iich is" thus so accessible to him, he 
finds to be a system, every part of which supports 
the other, and all tend to one conclusion. He 
has already good prima facie proof in favour of 
Christianity, quite as much so as in behalf of the 
ordinary truths of science, or the common events 
of history, or the occurrences of his time and 
neighbourhood. What I insist on is, that as he 
yields his assent to the natural truths, and acts 
upon his conviction, so he should also give a 
willing assent to the supernatural acts ; and, as 
this is pre-eminently a practical matter, he should 
add the consent of the will to the assent of the 
understanding, and enter by faith into j)ossession 
of the blessings secured. 

As he does so he will find that new evidence 



286 THE EVIDENCES 

pours in upon him. His eye having been singly 
bent upon discovering the hght of truth, he is 
rewarded first by discovering hght, and then, in 
that hght he finds his way to more hght. When 
the boy behoves the Copernican and Newtonian 
theories of the heavens on the fair evidence pre- 
sented to him, he finds in all his after life ex- 
perimental confirmation of the doctrines. The 
young anatomist who rejects the theory that the 
backbone is made up of vertebrae will find him- 
self involved in ever-increasing difficulties, as he 
would reach a consistent view of the skeleton ; 
but, let him admit the hypothesis, and he has 
corroborations in every bone of the frame. In 
like manner, he who rejects Christianity shall 
find that he has turned his back upon the light, 
and that he is walking into deeper darkness ; 
while he who is led to embrace it, by its primary 
proof, will find that he has his face to the light, 
that the shadow is behind him, and that more 
light shines upon him as he advances. He will 
see every day, more and more clearly, that the 
gift of God's Son harmonizes all things in this 
world; and, as he exercises faith on the Sa- 
viour, he has within himself the most convincing 
of all proof, because an experimental proof. 

But neither is this evidence independent of 
the other proofs, and we ran the risk of ex- 
tinguishing it, or rather of hindering it from 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



287 



being kindled, if we do not allow them to feed 
it. For the question arises, how are those who 
have not this inward witness to obtain it? If 
the answer be, by confiding in the religion 
proffered us, this only raises the question, on 
what ground is this demanded ? If the reply 
be, " only believe," I ask, beheve in what? and 
if the demand be to believe in the religion of 
our fathers or of our country, then I shew that 
this would justify the Arab in believing in the 
Koran. The human intellect is so constituted 
that in order to conviction there must be fair 
evidence supplied, and when this is not pre- 
sented, minds of the higher sort will be apt to 
resist and resent the attempts made to coerce 
them, or to gain them on the ground of mere 
hereditary opinion. There is an utter ignorance 
of human nature shewn by those who tell the 
anxious inquirer that he needs no other witness 
than the experimental one, for the person feels 
— painfully feels it may be — that as yet he has 
not that heart testimony, and may probably turn 
upon you, and tell you with great bitterness, that 
he is without it, and ask what you can do for 
him in his present state. As I understand the 
plan of salvation, there must be some faith be- 
fore any man can have the inward light. It is 
to faith, as receiving it, that the grace is im- 
parted which becomes the witness. The evi- 



288 



TEE EVIDENCES 



deuce which gains the assent may not embrace 
all that is expounded in books of apologetics ; it 
may not be systematized or expressed by him 
who is swayed by it ; it may be of the simplest 
possible character, derived from the reading of 
the Word, and a recognition of the truths there 
revealed as suited to our nature, and evidently 
provided by the good God who made us, and the 
holy God who rules the world ; still it is evidence 
good in itself, and when it gains the willandhas 
power in the heart the man has now more satis- 
factory proof, than ever he had before, in this 
light within, — which has depended on the pre- 
liminary faith and evidence, only as the burning 
lamp has upon the taper which kindled it. 
It is upon this internal experience that the 
believer ever falls back, when at any time he is 
harassed by doubts or oppressed by fears. He 
may not be able to answer all the objections 
urged against religion. He may not be able to 
shew wherein lies the fallacy of Hume's objec- 
tions to miracles — any more than he can solve 
all the dflficulties which the same ingenious 
sceptic has started about the existence of matter. 
He cannot, it may be, shew the very reconcilia- 
tion of the progression in the opening chapter of 
Genesis, with the progression of palaeontology, 
(though he sees a general correspondence,) nor 
rebut every scoffing assertion, put by the Rev. 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 289 

Rowland Williams into the mouth of Bunsen 
(who never scoffed, and was so devout and loving, 
despite the emptiness and inconsistencies of his 
creed), nor clear up every doubt uttered with so 
wild a cry by the Rev. Benjamin Jowett, who 
looks so sorry because he has lost his early faith, 
and yet cannot repent of his having parted with 
it. Still, he has attained a most reasonable con- 
viction, and he stands — and he feels he can 
stand firmly — upon the overwhelming evidence 
which he has in the felt power of religion. So 
far as he has time to enter into the controversy, 
he is convinced that the argument is all on the 
side of the defenders of Christianity. But his 
defence, when every other fails him, will be — " I 
am not able to demonstrate it, or confute all 
your objections; but I feel it, I know it to be 
true." The meaning of all this is, that he, a 
simple, perhaps an unlettered, or a practically 
busy Christian has not been trained and is not ac- 
customed, to give his reasons for his conviction. 
But he is not, therefore, without his reasons. 
It is an argument valid in every way ; it is an 
argument with the premises and the conclusion 
both within his own experience. It is an argument 
from effect to cause ; he argues that the religion 
must be Divine which has had, which has, such a 
beneficent influence in giving peace and in gain- 
ing victories over the evil inclinations of the heart. 

T 



290 TBE EVIDENCES 

According to this representation, there is an 
important end served by works on the Christian 
Evidences. I am aware that some excellent 
Christians speak disparagingly of all books on 
apologetic theology, and of addresses on re- 
ligious subjects to what they call the logical 
understanding. And I allow at once that the 
understanding cannot do everything, that it 
cannot fulfil the highest offices in rehgion; I 
admit it as a fact of our mental nature, that no 
logical act of the mind does of itself call forth 
feeling. No abstract notion, no general notion, 
no proposition as a proposition, no linked ratio- 
cination, is fitted to excite love or emotion of any 
kind. Feeling is evoked by the perceived pre- 
sence, or by the mental apprehension and image 
of a person, or of an individual object of some 
description. But still, the discursive processes 
of the mind, as part of the constitution given 
us by God, have important purposes to serve. 
The abstract or general notion logically formed 
clears our apprehensions, and may allow the 
affection to flow forth towards its proper object. 
A false proposition assented to, and a perverted 
train of reasoning, may turn aside the whole 
current of the sentiments, when they were ready 
to flow in the right channel. Convince the son 
that his father has committed a dishonest or 
dishonourable action, and his feeling of esteem 



OF CERISTIAKITY. 



291 



instantly suffers a fearful revulsion. Eeason us 
into the opinion that Jesus Christ is not what 
he professed, or that he did a dishonourable 
action, and our reverence for him is sadly in- 
terfered with. When the understanding is not 
gained, the pictures of the fancy pass away like 
the incidents of the drama or the novel, which 
no doubt leave their impression for good or for 
evil, but do not engage any abiding affection 
towards the characters, or issue in any course of 
practical conduct directed towards them. It 
w^as never meant that our varied mental powers 
should be separated in the convictions we cherish 
towards God and the homage we pay him, — 
just as it was never intended that we should mu- 
tilate or divide the members of our frame in our 
corporeal exercises. Every one knows that the 
utter neglect or even the undue use of any of 
our bodily organs disfigures the general form ; 
' and a hke prejudicial influence is exercised upon 
the soul wdien, in our pious acts and services, 
we disunite those faculties which ought all to be 
consecrated to God, and dedicated to his service, 
and w^hich ever operate best w^hen they co- 
operate, — when, for example, we give such a 
dominating authority to the understanding as 
to become rationalists, or so indulge the feelings 
as to become sentimentalists, or allot to outward 
symbolism such a position in our worship as to 



292 



TEE EVIDENCES 



make it take the place of God. We do claim 
for the understanding an important place in 
religion, as heing in a sense the very bones of 
the body, and yet we would have no one to stop 
and rest satisfied with a mere head conviction. 
There is never true faith till the will, the choice, 
the consent of the mind be gained — that is, till 
we, as it were, concur in what we discover to be 
true. And with this, and following upon it, 
there will be affection,— affection warm and 
livincf, rising beyond all discursive acts, em- 
bracing the object and clinging to it with a 
grasp which can never be loosened.* 

It was a most perilous course which was 
followed in Oxford an age ago, when men of 
erudition and friendly to religion laboured to 
shew that the Evidences of Religion, Natural 
and Revealed, could not stand the tests of 
logical evidence. Two very opposite and yet 
not inconsistent results followed. Those who 
had deep natural faith, feeling that they must 
have something to lean on, were induced to 
leap into the arms of a pretended infallible 
church, rather than be left in the dreary desert 
of unbelief, or be driven out into the awful gulf 
of atheism. As falling among other materials, 

* The above is the way in which I would settle the questions dis- 
cussed by Dr. Dorner in his Letter to the British Churches, by the 
Bishop of Cork in his Letter to me, and again by Dorner in the 
Tahrbucher fiir Deutsche Theoloffie. ■ . 



OF CERISTIANITY. 



293 



the sparks kindled a very different conflagration. 
Not a few, unable to accept the inconsistencies 
and follies of the Romish Church, were left out 
on the wide waste to which they had been con- 
ducted by those who should have led them in a 
far different route, and have ever since been rest- 
less — and conceited withal; looking wise above 
others, as they let you know that they see the 
errors of the vulgar creed, but ever constrained 
to look out on the dark waters before them, and 
unable to settle on any fixed conviction, or ac- 
cept any solid doctrine ; and in this painful 
position some of them pour out their soul in 
a plaintive tone, as those who have lost some- 
thing in which they trusted, but in which they 
trust no longer ; while others find a sort of 
relief in scoffing and reviling. 

Nor is this state of things much if at all 
improved, when some of those who go to the 
negative side, after they have shewn or rather 
asserted that the ordinary arguments in behalf of 
Christianity are inconclusive, hand us over to an 
inexplicable, an unreasoning, and unreasonable 
faith, which says nothing in behalf of Chris- 
tianity more than it does in favour of Buddhism. 
This was the very method of David Hume as he 
mocked at Christianity, — he was not meaning to 
treat religion with disrespect when he shewed 
that it could not stand a sifting inspection by 



294 



TSE EVIDENCES 



the reason, he was rather honouring it when he 
consigned it to the region of faith ! ! It is a 
curious circumstance, that some unwise friends 
of Christianity at the time were deceived by this 
style of speaking, and actually maintained that 
the great sceptic was benefiting religion, and 
placing it upon a surer basis than those who 
defended it by argument. This is the method 
w^hich has been followed in our day by Mr. B. 
Powell, who proceeds systematically to under- 
mine our belief in the supernatural, as a reason- 
able conviction which can stand the tests of 
modern induction, and then commits us to some 
sort of faith or moral vision, of whose nature he 
gives no account, and whose claims upon our 
attention he is at no pains to vindicate. It is a 
circumstance to be regretted that this is the 
method practically followed by some in our time, 
who w^ould shrink with horror from the blank 
scepticism of Hume, and are entirely opposed to 
the cold naturalism of Mr. Powell. Those to 
whom I now^ refer, after cutting off all the common 
arguments in behalf of the Divine existence and 
of Christianity, still insist that mankind should 
believe. But it has turned out, as any man of 
ordinary sagacity might have foreseen, that those 
who have followed them in their speculative 
scepticism refuse to be led by them — indeed 
feel that they cannot obey them — when bidden 



OF CERISTIANITY, 295 

to believe. These doubts and sceptical princi- 
ples may exercise no influence for evil on those 
middle-aejed men who have reached a settled 
conviction, and who can stand secure, though 
the ladder by which they mounted be taken down, 
as they will certainly be felt to be harmless by 
those who have the light of the Spirit to keep 
them from wandering ; but I fear, that unless 
counteracted, they may leave their impression 
on those young men who have attained to no 
decided beUef, and who feel that they have no 
means left them of reaching the heights which 
they see far above them. The natural effect on 
their minds will be, that they dechne accepting 
a religion which is supposed to be incapable of 
defence ; and it is vain for good men to exhort 
them to seek the light, after they have taken 
such pains to shew that there is no evidence 
that light is to be found. 

In opposition to all this prevailing style of 
thought and sentiment, of doubt, insinuation, 
inuendo, and complaint, it should be openly 
declared and resolutely maintained that the 
Divine origin of Christianity can be defended 
to the satisfaction of the human understanding. 
The Rev. Mark Pattison would leave the impres- 
sion on our minds, that the Defences of Religion 
by writers in England, from the Revolution 
Settlement to the Middle of Last Century, were 



296 TEE EVIDENCES 

an entire failure. But among his learned lite- 
rary sketches, and his petty carpings, we look in 
vain for any clear and broad statement of the 
grounds on which he reckons the arguments 
as inconclusive. Some dozen writers of con- 
siderable ability had made an attack on Chris- 
tianity, and they were answered by many scores 
of authors, who wrote hundreds of works of all 
sizes, from the ephemeral pamphlet up to the 
octavo or folio of several volumes, and poured 
them forth every year, at times every few months, 
for two or three ages. The works of some of 
the deistical writers had a considerable sale — 
larger than even the *' Essays and Reviews " 
have had — and the authors and their supporters 
spoke with high confidence, and boasted that 
as Christianity had already been abandoned by 
free and independent thinkers, it would be cast 
off by all before the end of the century. The 
names of some of the English deists are still 
occasionally referred to, but their works are 
placed upon the inaccessible shelves of our great 
libraries, and are seldom taken down except by 
literary antiquarians and theological controver- 
sialists. The same fate has befallen the greater 
part of the replies to them, many of which were 
distinguished by ability quite equal to that of 
their opponents. In opposition to the i'pse dixit 
of Mr. Pattison, I give it as my decided convic- 



OF CERISTIANITY. 



297 



tion, the result of a considerable acquaintaDce 
with both sides of the controversy, that the objec- 
tions of the deistical writers were fully and fairly 
met by the defenders of the faith, as they were 
certainly believed to be so by the country at 
large, which, long before the time when Christi- 
anity was expected to fall, had ceased to read 
the attacks on it, and therefore ceased to read the 
mass of the replies to them. And there were 
defences produced at that time, such as those of 
Clarke, of Butler, and of Lardner, which are not 
superseded, which have never been systemati- 
cally answered, and which are not to be over- 
thrown by a small criticism, or the detection of 
some non-essential oversight or inaccuracy. It 
is all true that the defences were not always nor 
usually such as would be advanced in our day, 
but then, neither were the assaults. Those who 
stood up for Christianity, caught the spirit of 
their times ; they had to proceed on the prin- 
ciples given or granted to them, and to make 
their arguments face the weapons of the oppo- 
nents. In modern warfare we do not use shields 
as the ancients did, nor do we erect the same 
sort of fortresses as our fathers did in feudal 
times. When the philosophy of Locke was 
reigning iii last century, the assailants of Chris- 
tianity proceeded upon its mixed sensationalism, 
utilitarianism, and rationalism, and the defenders 



298 



THE EVIDENCES 



of Christianity did the same, and foiled their 
opponents with their own weapons. Now that 
the reaction against Locke has been very strong 
among a certain class of thinkers, it would 
not be wise to reproduce the old defences 
in precisely the same form, — ^just as no one 
w^ould now erect the old baronial tower to resist 
the modern gunnery and grape shot. But the 
Christianity which survived the autumnal decay 
and the winter cold of last century will not only 
stand, but will shoot vigorously upward, in the 
spring revival wdth which it is now visited, and 
will be found — like the plant — to have defences 
ready to meet the attacks made on it. 

The infidel WTiters of our day have not more 
ability than those of the first half of last century, 
and they certainly have not nearly the same 
amount of originality and independence. Their 
weapons are avowedly borrowed from Germany, 
and the objections advanced, whether philo- 
sophical, critical, or historical, have, I believe, 
been answered in the land of their birth. In 
that country the great theologians of the age 
now passing away, and of the present age, have 
wrestled with the infidelity of the past age or 
two, and have overcome it. It is scarcely honest 
in men who are scholars, to propagate the 
objections, the cavils, and the doubts of the 
rationalist or infidel writers of Germany, .without 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



299 



letting us know that the leadmg hving divines 
of Germany think they have answered them, and 
are generally allowed to have done so by those 
who study these subjects in that country ; and 
that the young life of Germany is so convinced 
of this, that the students of the Universities 
with eager looks throng (as I can testify from 
personal visits) the class rooms of the defenders 
of the old and orthodox theology, while the ra- 
tionalists are lecturing to nearly empty benches, 
the few occupants of which shew plainly, by 
their whole manner, that they have no faith in 
their preceptors. It was not right in Mr. R. 
"Williams to use the name of Bunsen, without 
apprizing us that that distinguished man has not 
had, for the last ten years, the least influence in 
Germany as a thinker or a divine, — however 
much he has been revered and beloved for his 
genius, his literary ability, his attachment to 
religious liberty, and his noble personal charac- 
ter as a man and a Christian. In a treatise 
devoted to a special topic, we cannot give the 
defences that have appeared in Germany of the 
Word of God and its leading doctrines; but they 
will now be produced in abundance in this 
country, either in translations, or, better still, 
transmitted through the minds of Englishmen, 
who, while they freely use the materials pre- 
pared for them, at the same time give them a 



300 



TEE EVIDENCES 



form and a direction suited to the tastes and 
wants of our age and nation. 

The Christian apologist should ever bear in 
mind as for himself, and he should always let it 
appear in his writings, that he does not stand 
on any one of the proofs, since he has so many. 
Every one of the parts, indeed, has some force, 
but their strength li^s in their combination. 
He who would force an entrance is not to be 
allowed to break the links one by one, but must 
face the whole complex chain-work. It is easy 
to insinuate doubt and start difficulties, — there 
are some whose intellectual temper leads them 
to do so in regard to every topic ; and in every 
profound subject perplexities can be found by 
those who are bent on discovering them. It 
should be allowed in regard to revealed truth, that 
it is not difficult to fall in with real difficulties : — 
originating in the brevity of the narratives trans- 
mitted to us ; in our consequent ignorance of the 
whole facts ; in the apparent discrepancies thus 
produced as we want the reconciling fact; in 
the incidents having occurred in remote ages and 
times, when the manners, and feelings, and 
modes of speaking and address, were so different 
from what they now are ; in natural feelings 
being allowed their play in the inspired writ- 
ings ; in the occasional corruptions which have 
crept into manuscript texts of the Scripture ; in 



OF CEEISTIANITY. 



301 



the high and mysterious character of many of the 
doctrines taught ; and in the Hmited capacities 
of man ; or it may be in many other circum- 
stances. By fixing the attention on one or two of 
these difficulties, and by gazing on them till they 
have become enlarged and assumed a formidable 
shape in the twihght, we may create a plausible 
objection, — just as w^e have found in our own per- 
sonal history, that the most innocent incidents 
have been made to take a sinister and suspicious 
appearance, by being separated from the cir- 
cumstances and the connexions. It is the policy 
of the infidel, to draw off the attention from the 
grand body of evidence to the minute perplexi- 
ties and apparent discrepancies, and this often 
by hint and inuendo, rather than direct asser- 
tion. Christian apologists, each in his own de- 
partment, must consider these difficulties; but 
they should never allow their whole forces to be 
drawn down into a disadvantageous hollow, 
where the fight becomes a squabble, in which 
a very w^eak but impudent enemy may seem to 
be gaining the victory. In going down to 
meet the adversary in detail, they should feel 
for themselves, and make it appear to all 
onlookers, that their strength lies in their 
grand general proof; and as they do so they 
may, without damaging their cause, allow that 
there are difficulties which they cannot entirely 



302 THE E riBENCES 

meet, and mysteries which they cannot fully 
clear up. 

Were it within our special subject, it might 
be shewn by a historico- critical dissertation that, 
in every age of the Church of God, sufficient 
evidence has been furnished to the candid mind 
of the operation of a supernatural power. It 
should be added, that in no age has proof of 
such a character been furnished as to preclude 
the possibility of doubt. I believe that the very 
existence of God is not a truth of so intuitive or 
demonstrative a character, as to make it impos- 
sible for the fool to say in his heart that there 
is no God. In regard to the Bible revelation, 
God has given sufficient proof to convince every 
truth-seeking mind, but not enough to prevent 
cavilling. There is thus a sort of moral pro- 
bation in the way in which the evidence is 
presented. 

In some respects it is more difficult for those 
educated up to the advanced science of our age 
to believe in a supernatural operation, than for 
those who lived in earlier times, when the dis- 
tinction between the Divine and the mundane 
had not been clearly drawn. And, again, since 
the days of Niebuhr, historical criticism has 
been altogether setting aside a thousand legends, 
in which our forefathers supposed there might 
be some discoverable truth. But then, to coun- 



OF CHMISTIANirY. 



303 



terbalance all this, we have now reached a firm 
settlement and a clear expression of many scien- 
tific and critical principles, which were before 
undefined and disputed. In primitive ages and 
rude states of society, it has not been determined 
how much or how little nature can do, and so 
persons ascribe to the supernatural what is purely 
natural; but they may also refer to nature what 
is miraculous. In such stages of society, adults 
are in the position in which children still are, 
who would not be astonished though you were 
to tell them that a dog had spoken, or that a cat 
could fly, or that the moon might be brought 
down and exposed for inspection on the table. 
The savage could easily be persuaded that bal- 
loons are heavenly visitants, and that steam- 
ships are moving gods. In such a state of 
things, much might be ascribed to the unknown 
powers of the world, which really came from the 
special operation of God. But in these ages 
and countries, while we are still far enough 
from knowing all that nature can do, we know 
that it has certain impassable limits imposed 
upon it ; we know that no human skill can cure 
organic diseases, that no human power can raise 
the dead. Historical criticism has certainly set 
aside many narratives wiiich were fondly credited 
in former days ; but then, it has laid down rules 
which decide that certain other narratives are 



304. 



THE EVIDENCES 



not to be denied. It has made us doubt of the 
legends of early Greece and Rome, because we 
have, in fact, no original witnesses in their favour; 
but it has made it impossible for us to doubt 
of the poisoning of Socrates, of the conquests of 
Alexander, of the battle of Pharsalia, of the as- 
sassination of Julius Csesar ; and none of these 
events is supported by better evidence than the 
crucifixion of Jesus and his resurrection from 
the dead. 

If it be true that in these times we have a 
more expanded view of the system of nature, it 
is also true, that from the height we have 
reached, we have a better comprehension of 
Christianity, of its varied evidences, and of the 
influence which it exercises for good on nations 
and on individuals. If the telescope has dis- 
closed to us new worlds under natural law, the 
revelation of God has shewn us spiritual lights, 
which we now clearly discover to be under yet 
higher laAV. If geology has carried us far beyond 
human and historical ages, and has shewn the 
same causes operating in them all and down 
to this present time, the Word of God brings 
before us a counsel and a plan, beginning before 
creation, and kept in view in all creation, and 
being executed in time. If the combined lights of 
history and of travels let us see more of the cha- 
racter and ways of mankind, they also prove more 



OF CERISTIANITY. 



305 



clearly and unequivocally, that man has never 
risen by his own unaided exertion to a pure 
religion, or the conception of a pure morality. 
With the completed Scriptures in our hands in 
a printed form, and with the light thrown upon 
them by the observation of travellers in eastern 
countries and the researches of scholars, we can 
more readily compare one part with another and 
rise to a connected view of the whole. We now 
see more fully than our fathers could do the 
fulfilment of prophecy; in the Jews scattered 
among all nations ; in the present condition of 
the Bible lands ; in tlie fate of the Assyrian, the 
Babylonian, and Egyptian empires; in the pro- 
gress of the kingdom of Christ; and in the 
mighty power once reached by the Romish 
Church, and the struggles it is making prior 
to its ultimate fall. We have a wider experience, 
than those who lived in former times, as to the 
inability of unaided reason to provide a pure 
religion satisfactory to the wants of mankind. 
The Fathers of the Church urged, with great 
power, that for many long ages human nature 
had had a fair field in which to shew what it 
could do without a revelation. But, to the 
experimental facts known to the early apologists 
of the faith, we have now an immense addition 
gathered from all descriptions of countries, from 
the savage life of Africa, America, and Australia, 

u 



306 THE EVIDENCES 

and from the hundreds of millions of the semi- 
civilized inhabitants of China and Japan. 

We can likewise point to experiments of a 
new kind, in the attempts which have been 
made to supersede Christianity by those who have 
had the advantage of the light shed by its revealed 
truths. We had, for example, the attempts of 
the French deists or atheists towards the close 
of last century, leading to the disorganization 
of all society, and kept from intolerable disorder 
only by the rise of a military despotism, and a 
determined reaction in favour of Eomish Chris- 
tianity. About the same time we had, in our 
own land, the rationalistic and good morality 
school, which has been felt to be utterly power- 
less to move the heart or gain the affections of 
the great mass of the people, who were left in the 
lower streets of our great cities, and in many of 
our rural districts too, without any attempt to 
elevate them. It has been shewn by this last 
experiment, that while a fair outward morality 
may abide for an age or so after religion has 
ceased to operate as a living power, it is only to 
disappear and to be turned into vice and degra- 
dation in the succeeding generation, — just as the 
train may go on for a time after the engine has 
been taken off, but will cease in the end to have 
any motion— except it be a downward and de- 
structive one. We have also had^ at a later date, 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



m 



among a portion of the educated classes all over 
Europe, the bolder attempts of the great panthe- 
istic school of Germany, ending in utter specula- 
tive confusion, and in acknowledged failure in 
the land of its birth, and sweeping over other 
countries without influencing any beyond a few 
speculative or literary men, who cannot be said to 
have got peace for themselves, and who have 
nothing to ofi'er to others. Many a modern sys- 
tem builder, after spending a lifetime in oppos- 
ing Christianity, has been obliged to feel, if not 
to say, with Julian, " Thou hast conquered me, 
Galilean." 

And what has the Naturalist School, which is 
now springing up on the debris of the rational- 
istic and pantheistic systems, to offer to the poor 
in their wants, to the sorrowing in their be- 
reavements, to the sick in their helplessness, to 
the outcast in their degradation, to bear them 
up, to cheer them and regenerate them. The 
believers in mere natural force have generally 
kept out of the way of such — except indeed at 
times to relieve their temporal wants — and when 
at any time they have been brought face to face 
with them, they have commonly been struck 
with dumbness, as feeling that they have no 
balm to offer to their wounded and bleeding 
spirits. Not that we are to look on the Gospel 
as fitted only for the poor and degraded. I 



308 



THE EVIDENCES 



believe that the veiy rich are often made to feel 
their poverty in the midst of their wealth ; and 
the gay their need of an abiding object in the 
midst of their pleasures ; and the refined their 
need of a deeper enjoyment in the midst of their 
elegances and comforts ; that the learned feel 
their ignorance in the midst of their accumula- 
tions of facts and opinions ; that the self-righte- 
ous man feels that he wants an embankment to 
beat back the waters when they would flow in at 
the low places of his soul ; and the strongest 
and most confident are impressed with their 
helplessness when temptations come in among 
their passions — as the burning ships did into the 
heart of the Armada ; and where are remedies to 
be found for all these felt evils, so varied in the 
case of different individuals, and so deep in the 
heart of each, save in the religion of the cross of 
Christ ? 



SECT. II.— CONNEXION BETWEEN THE MIRACLE AND THE 

DOCTRINE. 

The relation between these two easily settles 
itself practically, in the sincere and unsophisti- 
cated mind. We cannot have a clear idea of it 
theoretically, without making a number of expla- 
nations and distinctions. 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



309 



In regard to certain of the doctrines, such as 
that of the Holy Trinity, and the Deity of 
Jesus Christ, we accept them on the authority 
of God speaking in his Word, and we have proof 
that God there speaks, from the miracles wrought 
in attestation, taken always in combination with 
the general doctrines of Scripture, as commend- 
ing themselves to our moral reason, and as being 
thus seen to be worthy of God. Again, in re- 
gard to some of the miracles, it may be said to be 
rather the general authority of Scripture which 
leads us to look on them as beyond natural 
power. For. taken apart and by themselves, 
they are not supported by such an amount of 
testimony as would bear them up ; or they might 
be regarded simply as mundane occurrences. 
We believe them because we believe the Bible, 
which, however, has a combination of unimpeach- 
able witnesses to vouch for it. 

Deducting such cases, it appears to me that 
the doctrines and the miracles concur and con- 
spire in the issue to which we are led. They 
unite, as mixed elements commonly do, as the 
ground of our convictions in the common affairs 
of life. How often, for example, do we look to 
the character of the witness, and to the manner 
of his testimony, and the nature of the fact he 
depones to, before we give or withhold our assent 
to his declarations. The man of candour and 



310 



THE EVIDENCES 



ordinary shrewdness easily combines these into 
a consistent unity, while it might require a skil- 
ful analysis to spread out the parts of the argu- 
ment in a logical manner, and reduce them to 
regular formulae. It is in much the same way, 
that the truths revealed and the miracles attest- 
ing them are blended into a very satisfactory 
evidence by a truth-seeking mind, which may 
not meanwhile, and unless it has been logically 
trained, be able or inclined to untwist the threads, 
and allot to each its evidential value. 

As I understand the inspired writers, we are 
invited to look both to the miracles and to the 
doctrines, and also to the circumstances in which 
the revelation was made, and the position in 
which man is placed, as evidence of the truth 
of the Christian religion. The miracles are 
wrought in behalf of revelations which commend 
themselves to our higher reason and meet our 
deeper wants. In particular, the miracles of our 
Lord are associated with a character of the 
highest purity, with motives of the most perfect 
transparency, and with ends of the most disinte- 
rested benevolence. What we read of the person 
of Jesus, and of the spirit he exhibited, and the 
truths he set forth, and the precepts he incuU 
cated, makes us attend to his miracles, which 
again assure us that he is a teacher sent from 
God, and we believe what he taught. We look 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 311 

to the revelation which God is alleged to have 
.made, and we find it in every way suited to our 
moral nature and state, as bridging over the 
awful gulf which separates the holy God from 
the sinful creature, and thus bringing peace to 
our dissatisfied minds and troubled consciences, 
and providing a means of enabling us to rise to 
communion with God and a heavenly purity. 
We wonder if all this can indeed be true, and 
we examine the series of alleged supernatural 
events wrought in attestation, and we find them 
sustained by evidence quite as unexceptionable 
as we have in behalf of any occurrence handed 
down from ancient times. Our conviction is 
gained, not so much by the force of either of 
these considerations singly, as by the way in 
which they fit into one another. This process is 
not " reasoning in a circle." We do not assume 
without evidence that the doctrine is true and 
proves the miracle, and then take for granted 
that a miracle has been wrought and establishes 
the doctrine. The character of Jesus com- 
mends itself to our highest moral idea, and the 
salvation provided by him meets our deepest 
moral wants ; while we have satisfactory evidence 
of the performance of works which, from their 
very nature, must be superhuman. Each side 
stands on an independent basis ; but each helps 
also to support the other, as they meet in an arch 



312 



THE EVIDENCES 



which bears up those mysterious doctrines which 
relate to distinctions in the Divine nature and 
the constitution of the person of Jesus. 

Ail that a miracle by itself proves, is the 
operation of a supernatural power. The pur- 
pose for which it is wrouglit must be gathered 
from the concomitant circumstances, which, in 
the case of most of the miracles recorded in 
Scripture, are quite sufficient to shew that the 
event has been wrought by God, and not by any 
inferior or evil power. Being openly and pub- 
licly appealed to, by those who performed 
them, as operations of God, they pledge the 
Divine veracity to the mission of the worker. 

The question is here started, can a miracle 
vouch for an immoral doctrine or for an untruth ? 
It is quite conceivable, I think, that a preter- 
natural work might be wrought in behalf of a 
sinful practice or a positive falsehood. But 
even so, it could not sanction either the one or 
other. The good God being governor, we cannot 
believe him to allow an event to take place, 
fitted in itself, or meant by him, to support the 
evil which he so evidently condemns. As to a 
miracle or anything else proving a falsehood, it 
could do so only by destroying the primary laws 
of our intellectual constitution. A preternatural 
event, wrought in behalf of vice or falsehood 
(if such there be), must be the work of an evil 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



313 



spirit, and not of the God of goodness and truth. 
A question may be started as to whether God 
could or would permit an evil power so to inter- 
fere in our world. Of one thing I am very 
certain, that God would never allow such an 
interposition, unless he had provided a counter 
light sufficient to keep all who are seeking the 
truth from being deceived. I am inclined to 
think that God has allowed preternatural events 
to be wrought in our world by the great Adver- 
sary ; but then there was always a means of 
enabling those who witnessed them to refer 
them to their proper author, to him who had 
been a liar from the beginning ; and it is always 
arranged that the Wicked Power is immediately 
and evidently overwhelmed by the Good Power, 
bringing good out of evil and making the very 
malice of devils to praise him. In the tremen- 
dous convulsions which shook Pharaoh's throne, 
till the children of Israel were let go, there were 
awful exertions made by an ungodly power, and 
some of these, if we follow the obvious interpre- 
tation of Scripture, look as if they surpassed the 
limits of nature. But it is to be observed, that 
Satan's power is thus extended, only that it may 
be overwhelmed by the immediate forthputting 
of the higher power of God. In the opening of 
the New Testament dispensation, the license of 
Satan seems to be enlarged, and he is allowed 



314 THE E VIDENCE S 

to interfere in our world in a way usually for- 
bidden, in gracious consideration of our weak- 
ness : but all this is only to call forth a more 
signal display of the powers of Jesus, and to draw 
a confession from the mouths of demons. These 
lurid lights are allowed to rise from the regions 
below to amaze and bewilder, only when there 
are superior lights hung out in the firmament to 
guide the seekers of truth in the right path. 

As the revelation of God is unfolded, a system 
of doctrine emerges, which can easily be appre- 
hended, and which may be legitimately employed 
to attest alleged miracles, at least so far as to 
entitle us in certain cases to reject them as 
deeds wrought by God. " If there arise among 
you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams and 
giveth thee a sign or a wonder, and the sign or 
wonder come to pass whereof he spake unto 
thee, saying, let us go after other gods which 
thou hast not known, and let us serve them; 
thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that 
prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the Lord 
your God proveth you, to know whether ye love 
the Lord your God with all your heart and wdth 
all your soul" (Deut. xiii. 1 — 3). Here it is 
declared that a wonder, natural or preternatural, 
might be permitted to be wrought for ungodly 
purposes ; that when so allowed, it is in order to 
test the loyalty of those who have light ; and that 



OF CHRISTIANITY. ^^^ 

the wonder is not to be viewed as having the 
sanction of God. The same principle is laid down 
in the warning (Deut. xviii. 20) against prophets 
that " shall speak in the name of other gods." 
A like test is announced in the New Testament 
dispensation. " But though we or an angel 
from heaven preach any other gospel unto you 
than that which we have preached unto you, let 
him be accursed" (Gal. i. 8). It is on this 
principle that Protestants reject in so summary 
a manner the miracles of the Eomish Church ; 
they say, that being wrought in behalf of error 
they cannot be from the God of truth. Those 
who are disposed to look upon the occurrences 
as preternatural will tell you that they are 
wrought by the Powers of Evil; while the majo- 
rity of Protestants maintain that they bear no 
marks of being supernatural — that they are the 
offspring of a heated imagination or of deceit, of 
one or both. In all this they can be justified 
throughout, on the supposition that the system 
in behalf of which they are wrought is con- 
demned in Scripture. If in the latter ages of 
the Church miracles of God be renewed, and 
lying wonders also permitted from beneath 
(2 Thess. ii. 9), depend upon it men will always 
have means of distinguishing between them, and 
tracing both to their proper source in heaven 
or in hell. 



:16 



THE EVIDENCES 



SECT. III.— ENDS ACCOMPLISHED BY THE SYSTEMATIC 
CHARACTER OF REVELATION. 

I. The way in which we reach the conviction 
that there is a supernatural system, does not 
differ so much as some imagine, from the pro- 
cess by which we discover and authenticate the 
natural system. 

At the basis of our belief in regard to natural 
uniformity there are (as we have seen, Bk. I. c. iii.) 
certain intuitions which do not prove indeed that 
there is regularity, but are ever prom2:)ting us to 
take notice of it. The discovery is actually the 
result of a long course of inquiry, giving us an 
accumulation of inductions, all tending to one 
conclusion. Each department of nature, as it 
comes under inspection, is found to be conformed 
to uniform laws. It was perceived at a very 
early date that the sun, moon, and stars have 
settled courses, and are regular in their very irre- 
gularities. This did not prove that the tides are 
under the sway of physical causes ; but as they 
who dwelt near the sea coast watched their ebb 
and flow, they found that they too had fixed 
times, which are shewn by later science to be 
determined by the attractions of the sun and 
moon. All this is no evidence that law rules 
among these winds, which seem to rise and fall 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



17 



SO capriciously, but in due time it comes to be 
ascertained that according to a law of equilibrium, 
they ever flow towards the place at which the at- 
mosphere is more rarefied. All this time there 
is no proof that the sun may not shine by a 
supernatural exercise of Divine Power, but later 
science informs us that the sunbeam is correlated 
with the heat and mechanical power which play 
so active a part in our earth and atmosphere. 
The evidence cumulates, till at last we have in 
the particular laws a sufficient support to the 
general law, that there is uniformity throughout 
the Cosmos. 

But let us carefully observe what is the precise 
truth which we have reached. We have gained 
the positive rule, that there is a set of natural 
agencies everywhere acting uniformly, but we 
have not established — which is a very different 
thing — the negative rule, that there is nothing 
else. Every one will admit that what astronomy 
has demonstrated is, that gravitation universally 
operates, but not that there is no other force acting 
in the world or beyond it. In like manner, what 
science as a whole has ascertained is, that natu- 
ral law operates everywhere, but not that there 
is nothing but natural law. We have good 
grounds of belief as to the prevalence of mundane 
law, but no " grounds of disbeuef " as to the ex- 
ercise of preternatural power, so as to entitle us to 



318 TEE E VIDENCES 

say that it is impossible, in conceivable, or incre- 
dible. So far from this, it is quite by an analogous 
process that we reach the conyiction that there 
is a supernatural system, superinduced upon the 
natural and acting in the midst of it. 

First, there are certain internal convictions 
and feelings which prompt us to look for a super- 
natural power. There are deep mental principles 
which, as they look to certain obvious facts in 
nature, constrain us to believe in a Being above 
nature. This does not prove that this Being acts 
in our world in a supernatural way ; but it pre- 
pares us to believe that he may so act if it pleases 
him. And everywhere are there facts pressing 
themselves on our notice, from without and from 
within, which seem to say that it is possible or 
probable that God may interpose among natural 
agents, not to thwart his own ends, but to com- 
plete his evident plans. We are made to ac- 
knowledge on the one hand that God hates sin, 
and on the other hand that sin universally pre- 
vails. We are sure that God will by no means 
clear the guilty, and yet we cling to the hope 
that he is not altogether unappeasable. When 
we look up to him we are made to feel that he is 
at an infinite height above us, and yet we have 
a strong confidence that he is not altogether 
unknowable or unapproachable. But, however 
anxiously we may go in search of it, we can find 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



319 



in nature no reconciliatioD of these separated 
truths. Under these fears and hopes, there has 
ever been a disposition on the part of men to 
look for supernatural manifestations, and they 
have discovered them when they had no evi- 
dential warrant for so doing ; in the awful still- 
ness they have heard sounds which originated 
in the subjective intensity of their own longings ; 
as they strained their eyes in the terrible dark- 
ness, they have mistaken imperfectly-seen earthly 
objects for heavenly visitants. The profoundly 
wdse man who has, as for himself, studied the 
problems or realized the perplexities of the 
universe, will never be inclined to look contemp- 
tuously on the deep religious anxieties of man- 
kind ; nor will he allow himself to speak in tones 
of ridicule of the premature beliefs in a super- 
natural revelation, which some have been led to 
cherish from the very excess of their longings, — 
he looks on these as he would on the hasty 
judgments of the child who, in expecting his 
father to return, mistakes the stranger for him — 
as he looks on those fanciful analogies among 
natural objects, which Pythagoras and Plato 
found before the time. So far from despising 
these, the true philosopher will rather look on 
them as intimations of deep natural impulses 
and anticipations, which seem to guarantee an 
accomplishment in the end. Those who have 



320 THE EVIDENCES 

felt — as I suppose we must all have felt in our 
hours of deepest weakness and greatest strength 
— these faihngs and aspirations of heart, will be 
inclined to long and to pray that the Superna- 
tural Being would come out of his infinite dis- 
tance, that he would break his silence and make 
known his will to us ; and they will reckon 
themselves bound to give their candid considera- 
tion to an alleged revelation, which is to all ap- 
pearance well accredited, and seems to meet the 
wants of our nature and position. 

It should be freely admitted that these desires 
and cravings do not of themselves prove that 
there has been an actual revelation ; in order to 
carry the conviction of the reason, they need to 
be supported by a corresponding body of attested 
facts. Here, as in so many other cases, we 
require objective realities as the complement of 
subje<:tive anticipations — the latter, however, 
supplying the impulse which leads us to observe 
and collect the former. It is at this point that 
the systematic character of revelation comes in, 
to strengthen tenfo d tbe force of tbe evidence. 

In looking at the professed Eevelation in order 
to determine whether it actually comes from 
God, we begin, we may suppose, with the exami- 
nation of the parts. We look fiist at the cha- 
racter of God as presented in the Bible, and find 
it to be different from that given in any other 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



321 



religion :— unlike the gods of the neigtoouring 
nations, he is one ; and unlike the Deity created 
by philosophy, he hates sin and yet loves the 
sinner. We look at the view given of our own 
essential being, and we find it to be in exact 
conformity with our deepest convictions ; for the 
soul is represented as possessed of high endow- 
ments; as immortal and infinitely precious; as 
polluted by sin; as about to appear at a judgment 
seat ; and yet as capable of being restored to the 
favour and image of God, and to communion 
with him. We look at the historical events re- 
corded, and we find that they constitute a series; 
that the characters are after a type ; that the 
occurrences and ordinances raise up a set of 
ideas connected with sin and salvation ; and that 
they all culminate in the appearance of a Saviour 
of the world. We look at the prophecies, and 
we find them uttered in appropriate circum- 
stances, and the fulfilment of them realized in a 
succession of occurrences stretching over many 
ages and wide countries. We look at the mi- 
racles, and we find the narratives of them to 
be characterized by artlessness and guileless- 
ness, and the deeds themselves to be such as 
only God could perform, while they are signs 
of his great supernatural work in conquering 
evil. We look at the general doctrine, and we 
find it true to the character of God, and the 



322 TEE E riBENCES 

character of man, as revealed by nature, above 
which, however, it rises in an immeasurable 
degree. We look at the precept; we find it 
worthy of God, and suited to man as a sinner 
returning to God. We look to the functions 
of the Church, and we find it a peace-giving and 
purifying element in the world. Or we look 
first, and we look finally, and we ever look most 
fondly, to the person and the character of Jesus, 
and we see that he has come from God even as 
he has gone to God; that he came down from 
heaven to establish a reign of heaven on earth, 
and to carry up to heaven a people from the 
earth. Every one of these considerations carries 
its weight, which will be felt more or less by 
diiferent minds. Each seems to shew that the 
religion which embraces them must be Divine. 
But their overwhelming force arises from their 
being each a system, and connected parts of 
one great and consistent system, which must be 
supernatural. 

Much of the controversy in the Christian 
Evidences has turned round the subject of 
testimony. Deistical writers have shewn how 
testimony is often untrustworthy, especially 
when detailing matters which excite wonder. 
Dr. Chalmers, on the other hand, has argued that 
the testimony of fs^itnesses of a certain character 
is such that the improbability of their telhng a 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 323 

falsehood is, to say the least of it, as great as the 
improbahility of an interference with the laws of 
nature. The defenders of Christianity have la- 
boured to prove, and have succeeded in proving, 
that we have as full evidence of the genuineness 
of the books of the New Testament, as we have 
of that of any other work handed down to us 
from antiquity ; and that there are witnesses in 
favour of certain central events, such as the 
crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, quite as 
trustworthy as there are in behalf of any occur- 
rence in ancient times. But it is a great misap- 
prehension and mistake to suppose that the 
Christian Evidences lean entirely, or even 
mainly, on evidence derived from testimony; 
and it is not wise in certain apologists to make 
the whole hang on one thread, when we have a 
" triple cord which cannot be broken." In re- 
gard to many of the evidences, we are dependent 
on testimony only to the very smallest possible 
extent, — to no greater extent than the astrono- 
mer or the geologist is when he uses reports 
drawn out by observers in various parts of the 
world, he himself being all the while quite 
competent to test their credibility. We must 
have it certified that the Scriptures have come 
down to us from a very old date, and that they 
were written by persons in the land of Judea; 
but with a very few such facts given or granted. 



324 TEE EVIDENCES 

we are prepared to apprehend and appreciate the 
force of by far the greater part of the Christian 
Evidences, and particularly of all the Internal 
Evidences ; and if we are led by these to add 
the Experimental Evidence, derived from the 
power of religion in and over the heart, we have 
gained a conviction which can never be shaken. 
For the question now is, not whether testimony 
may not be fallacious, but whether all the evi- 
dence, external and internal, can possibly be 
deceptive. 

I allow freely that a wide experience has settled 
that there is a system of nature. But I claim 
that a large observation, coupled with deep 
thoughts and deep convictions, has determined 
that there is also a preternatural system. Prin- 
cipal Campbell, in his reply to Hume's objections 
to Miracles, supposes that a person had lived for 
some years near a ferry, and that he had seen the 
passage-boat cross the river a thousand times in 
safety ; this experience, he argues, would not en- 
title him to disbelieve the statement of a credible 
witness who comes and tells him that he has just 
seen the same boat overwhelmed. This illustra- 
tion will suit our present purpose, if we are 
allowed to modify it. Let us suppose that the 
person had seen the ferry-boat cross day after 
day with wonderful regularity, but had observed 
that on certain days it did not ply as usual, and 



OF CHRISTIANITY, 



325 



tbat, on more careful inquiry, he found that the 
days on which it rested were Sundays ; he would 
now have the general rule, but he would also 
have the rule of the exceptions, and he would 
see the propriety of both — the one being for 
secular good, and the other to promote sacred 
ends. The case is very analogous to what we 
have in our world ; we observe a uniformity in 
nature to mqet man's intelligence and con- 
venience, and possibly to serve many other ends ; 
but our attention is also called to a course of 
supernatural action, coincident with the natural, 
and joining on to it, to meet man's spiritual 
wants, and to harmonize heaven and earth, — the 
two being, after all, the essential parts of one 
comprehensive system, the outward and inner 
compartments of one grand temple. 

II. This systematic character of revelation 
makes it impossible for us to explain it by natu- 
ral agency. 

It is now acknowledged, that the old natural- 
istic explanations are all failures. Every one 
now sees that we cannot account for the Chris- 
tian religion by a studious deception. This 
hypothesis, with the ai,d of a considerable 
straining and perversion, might be held as 
explaining certain very small parts here and 
there ; but it furnishes no plausible account 
of the whole, which, because of its comprehen- 



326 TEE E VIEENCES 

siveness, could not have proceeded from one 
mind, and because of its consistency and con- 
nexions reaching through long ages, could not 
have sprung from a concurrence of minds all 
bent upon deceit. It is just as clear that it 
could not have been fashioned by enthusiasm 
and superstition, which, in their extensive sway, 
shew that man is a religious being, but which, 
from their very nature, lead only to incongruous 
and inconsistent results. Nor will the union of 
the two, — of deceit with genuine but deluded 
feeling, — render any reasons for a system which 
embraces holy doctrine and high morality, and 
connected events, which run through long suc- 
cessive ages, and are brought about unconsciously 
by persons utterly ignorant of the ends accom- 
plished by them. 

The more modern theories equally fail. The 
hypothesis of Paulus, that the Gospel narratives 
were natural occurrences misunderstood and mis- 
interpreted, has now no supporters. Whatever 
superficial plausibility it might have, as applied 
to a very few isolated incidents, it was seen 
to be utterly incapable of accounting for the 
whole series in its integrity and connexions, and 
it had no explanation to give of the high morality 
and the holy doctrine which are imbedded in the 
heart of such an accumulation of supposed mis- 
apprehensions and perversions. This weak sup- 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



327 



position has given way to another — the last re- 
source of infideUty, — and it, too, is now being- 
seen to be as signal a failure as the others. 

It is alleged that the whole supposed super- 
natural system has sprung from those principles 
of human nature which produce myths in all 
countries. As long as it wraps itself up in vague 
general statements, it is difficult to fight with 
this theory, which, when it is caught in one 
shape, quickly assumes another. But when it 
takes the form of affirming that the Scriptures 
are a myth, or a series of myths, it can be satis- 
factorily met and overthrown. 

Of late years a vast amount of curious infor- 
mation has been collected, and a great deal of 
speculative and learned sense and nonsense 
has been written, about myths. Myths are, in 
fact, stories embodying and expressing a pre- 
vailing belief or feeling in a family, a district, or 
a nation. Sometimes they had a foundation 
in historical incidents, which, however, have 
been so buried in the accumulated additions, 
that it is impossible to find the fact in the fable. 
Sometimes they are mere fictions got up (like 
the modern romance) to please the phantasy 
and move the feelings — not unfrequently, I sus- 
pect, of children, and in all cases of a people 
credulous as children. At times they are after- 
inventions to explain or justify certain beliefs 



328 



TEE EVIBENCES 



and prepossessions. In order to be myths, and 
not mere tales or legends, they must express a 
reignmg senthnent in a community, and it is 
thus they pass so readily from individual to in- 
dividual in the region in which the feeling pre- 
vails, and are handed down from one generation 
to another, and often go in a somewhat modified 
form with colonists into their new country. The 
myths may relate to anything , that interests a 
people, to the honour of the family or nation, to 
the romance of love or of war, or to the character 
and worship of the gods. 

The religious myth is exj^ressive of the reli- 
gious beliefs of the tribe or country. It arises 
out of the anterior sentiments of the people, and 
it reacts upon these sentiments, especially in the 
way of giving a form to what was before germi- 
nant but shapeless. It springs spontaneously 
from certain deep mental tendencies : — it has its 
root in the religious instincts of our nature; and 
the tale is fashioned to gratify the phantasy or 
imaging faculty ; and to furnish a body in which 
the feeling may dwell, and become objective and 
visible. Existing first in a floating oral form, it 
may have a permanence given to it by being 
embodied in written poetry or prose ; at times a 
selfish interest has been created in its favour by 
its becoming associated with a particular shrine 
or temple. Eeligious myths spring up. in all 



OF CEEISTIAmTT. 



329 



countries, till the critical spirit rises, to suppress 
them, or mankind have something better sup- 
pHed to them in the Word of God. As they are 
the product of human nature and of the circum- 
stances of the people, so they fully reflect these. 
It has been shown that they follow some sort of 
laws, which have been traced with amazing eru- 
dition and excessive ingenuity by German critics. 
All these laborious researches have only shewn 
how wide the difference between the myths 
of the Gentiles, and the narratives of the Old 
Testament and the doctrines of the New Testa- 
ment. 

It holds true of all myths, that they are 
polytheistic. They originate always in a state 
of society in which it is the tendency of mankind 
to call in a muUitude of gods, to meet their rude 
wants, and to account for what they see. This 
is the first and a fundamental distinction be- 
tween them and the Scriptures, which are 
throughout a protest against polytheism. Again, 
the tales comprised in the myths, at least when 
they become numerous, are always incongruous 
and inconsistent. Springing up in divers places, 
and variously reported as they pass from mouth 
to mouth, no attempt is made to render them 
harmonious till the critical ages arrive, and then 
they cease to have power. All later historians 
have ceased to try to bring a connected train of 



330 TEE EVIDENCES 

events out of myths; Mr. Grote, for example, 
makes no attempt to draw history out of the 
hunting of the hoar of Calydon, of the Argonau- 
tic expedition, and the siege of Troy. This is a 
second point of difference between myths and the 
writings of the Old and New Testament, in 
which we have a long series of connected narra- 
tives palpably consistent with one another, and 
with external history — despite, the few seeming 
discrepancies which we may not be able to clear 
up. No one attempts to confirm Homer, or He- 
siod, or the gigantic myths of Brahminism and 
Buddhism by historical incidents, such as we 
can bring to corroborate Scripture from the 
tombs of Egypt, from the sculptured slabs of 
Nineveh, and from the works of such writers as 
Josephus and Tacitus. 

Myths, as they spring from human nature, 
so they faithfully represent it — in its strength, 
but also in its weakness. In giving expression 
to the religious fears and hopes of man, they 
likewise display the foibles, the aberrations, the 
sins of humanity. Proceeding from the human 
heart, they can never rise above the level of the 
fountain whence they issued. They are all 
marred, less or more, by caprices, by impurities, 
or by awful cruelties, supposed to be perpetrated 
by their very gods. This is the third and the 
most important point of difference between 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 331 

them and the views of God, and of Christ, and 
of morahty, presented in the Scriptures, say in 
the Discourses of our Lord and the Epistles of 
Paul and John. It has been maintained, that 
these last are myths growing out of the religious 
consciousness of the times. In opposition to 
this allegation it has been shewn, that the 
Gospel narratives and the Epistles appeared 
far too soon after the time of the death of Jesus 
to allow of the growth of myths. It has been 
shewn, too, that there was nothing in Jewish 
feeling, nothing in Phariseeism, or Sadduceeism, 
or Essene mysticism, nothing in Eastern or 
Alexandrian theosophies, nothing in the reli- 
gious feeling of all these countries, to generate 
those high and yet tender, those sublime and 
yet practical, views of God and his interest in 
mankind which are given in the New Testa- 
ment. But the strongest ground which we 
can take up in reply to the mythic theory is, 
that no Gentile myths have ever given us any 
such high and holy pictures, as we have pre- 
sented to us in the life of Christ, and in the 
doctrine and precepts of the New Testament. 
These arose, it is said, out of the religious con- 
sciousness of the times ! But how do we get a 
religious consciousness that would yield such a 
product — an earthly soil or an earthly seed which 
would produce such a plant? It has been 



332 



THE EVIDENCES 



shewn again and again, that there are far greater 
difficulties involved in supposing that the life of 
Jesus is an idea evoked out of human nature, 
than in at once allowing it to be a reahty.* 

The extensive inductions which have been 
gathered by later research as to myths, their 
nature and their laws, all go to prove that the 
Scripture narratives and doctrines differ from 
them in their whole letter and spirit. 

But while all this is resolutely maintained, it 
is not needful to affirm that there is no resem- 
blance whatever between auy portion of Scripture 
and the spontaneous myths of the Gentile na- 
tions. It is conceivable that a likeness might 
arise from two circumstances, both of them quite 
consistent with the inspiration of the Word of 
God. One is, that the deeper religious myths 
are the expressions of the religious feelings of 
mankind, which ever hold in solution a consider- 
able body of important truth. I believe that 
this arises in part from the traditions of primitive 
faith which have been preserved in most nations, 
but mainly from the fact that man has a deep 
religious nature which ever seeks an outlet. In 
particular, man has ever spontaneously held by 
two deep convictions, that there are supernatural 

* It is scarcely necessary, in this connexion, to refer to two such 
well-known works as "Taylor's Kestoration of Belief," an^ "Young's 
Christ of History." 



OF CERI8TIANI£Y. 



333 



powers, and that he as a sinner has given offence 
to them. Out of these two strong impulses have 
arisen, in heathen countries, a body of rites and 
concomitant myths, which bear a rude resem- 
blance to certain ordinances and narratives of 
Scripture, bearing on the relation of God and 
man. It may be admitted, that in some of the 
Eastern religions there is a dim appreciation of 
the duty of rising above the pollutions of the 
flesh ; that in Buddhism, and many forms of 
mysticism, there is an ill- directed aspiration after 
a closer communion with God ; and that even 
in those stern superstitions which demanded 
that on great emergencies parents should make 
their children pass through the fire, there was a 
sense of the need of an atonement ; and from 
these profound causes myths may at times have 
some things in common with Scripture. Nor do 
I see evil likely to arise from making a farther 
admission. We have seen that the natural mind 
of the prophet was not destroyed in the utter- 
ances which came from him. As Moses and 
Ezekiel both used the Hebrew language as they 
found it, it is also conceivable that the former may 
have taken some of his symbols from Eg}^3t, and 
the latter much of his imagery from the figures 
on the temples and palaces of Assyria. It is 
certain that the inspired ideas of the older pro- 
phets would, if left to their spontaneous flow, 



334 TEE EVIDENCES 

come out in forms analogous to the myths of the 
poets and sages of the Gentile nations ; and I 
see no reason why God should have interfered 
with the sinless powers of the prophets in the 
way of mutilating them, — the more so as w^hat 
came naturally from the heads of the writers 
would go home most efFectively to the intelli- 
gence of the readers. But all this applies only 
to the earlier prophets. In the course of ages 
there came to be a set of writers educated up to 
higher conceptions, and a class of readers ready 
to understand them. In the New Testament 
the special resemblance to myths altogether 
ceases. There are still parables and symbols 
addressed to the phantasy, and narratives of such 
simplicity that babes drink them with eagerness, 
but these have no likeness to myths ; and 
mingled with them we have brief sentences, 
which combine the lights from a thousand points 
into one bright focus which renders everything 
luminous. 

III. The circumstance that there is a super- 
natural economy in the midst of the natural, 
entitles us to regard certain events as preter- 
natural, which we might not have been able to 
prove to be so, had they stood alone and isolated 
from the system. The most rigid believer in 
natural law, were he to look at certain phe- 
nomena apart from his settled belief in the 



OF CHRISTIANITT. 



335 



prevalence of uniformity, might be inclined to 
admit that they are under no law, but holding 
by his general conviction he at once declares 
them to be natural in spite of appearances. It 
may, in like manner, be admitted by the most 
determined adherent of supernaturalism, that 
there are incidents recorded in Scripture which, 
if viewed apart from their connexions, might be 
represented as flowing entirely from human or 
mundane agencies ; but when we find them to 
be parts of the heavenly revelation, we declare, 
and are entitled to declare them to be super- 
natural, or at least providential. Just as our 
reasonable conviction of the existence of a natural 
system makes us claim for nature much which 
we might, on the first impression, have been 
inclined to place beyond it, so our equally rea- 
sonable conviction as to a supernatural economy 
authorizes us to refer to the immediate opera- 
tions of God not a few things, which we might 
otherwise have ascribed to the agency of mun- 
dane causes. 

lY. The systematic character of revelation 
enables us to get tests of the supernatural. It is 
in consequence of nature being a system, that we 
are able to determine, in most cases with con- 
siderable ease, what is natural and what is 
not natural. Nature has everywhere a certain 
method or style or aspect, which enables us to 



836 



TEE EVIDENCm 



recognize what belongs to her domains, and to 
distinguish between what is natural and what is 
artificial or unnatural or preternatural. We can 
commonly distinguish at once between what is 
produced by physical agency and what is effected 
by human skill. The naturahst rejects at once 
the stories about the mermaid, the unicorn, and 
the sea serpent, because such creatures are not 
in conformity with the homologies of the animal 
kingdom. We pay no attention to the common 
ghost stories, because they carry us into a pre- 
ternatural region. But Revelation comes to us 
also as a system, with its laws, its analogies, and 
its doctrines. It all revolves round one central 
point, — round the Incarnation of the Son of God 
for the purpose of bringing a lapsed world into a 
state of reconciliation with its own Governor. 
By the careful examination of it we may, in a 
general way, ascertain what is its method of pro- 
cedure ; what is in accordance with it, and what 
is not in accordance with it : what are the means 
it may employ, and what the means it cannot 
sanction. 

It may now be asked. How should we deal, 
according to the principles reached in these 
discussions, with the common pretensions to pre- 
ternaturalism ? Some one tells us an ordinary 
ghost story, about a person whom he knows 
having in a dark night seen a white figure 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 337 

moving and glaring at him. How are we to 
treat the narrative ? It is clear, on the instant, 
that the supposed facts do not connect them- 
selves with that supernatural system for which 
we have such a body of evidence. The story, 
then, cannot derive any prepossession in its 
favour from Kevelation. It must stand or fall on 
its own merits. Now, it has been ascertained, 
by a long induction not contradicted by any 
authenticated case, that ghosts are not among 
mundane agencies ; that the dead do not rise 
again to take a part in the affairs of this world. 
In the cases of the kind which we have been at 
the trouble to inquire into, we have found the 
tale to grow very much in the reporting and as 
it passed from mouth to mouth ; and when, at 
last, we got at the exact facts, we found that 
the supposed supernatural figure was simply an 
earthly object imperfectly seen, or that it was 
a mental image called up by fear, which so 
affected the brain that the person imagined 
that what he saw was an actual figure. Believ- 
ing that the whole can be accounted for in this, 
or in a similar way, we fall back on the uni- 
formity of nature as the general law, and think 
ourselves quite justified, while important duties 
devolve upon us in this busy world, to make no 
farther inquiries into the matter. In acting 
thus, we do not go the unreasonable length of 

T 



338 



THE EVIDENCES 



affirming, that a narrative of a preternatural 
event — that even a ghost story — could not pos- 
sibly be true, or could not possibly be proven. 
Still less do we act on any principle which 
would, in the least degree, interfere with the 
powerful evidence, derived from so many sources, 
which we have in favour of Christianity. We 
simply say, that we have no proof, and are not 
likely to get any proof, to counterbalance the 
improbability of such a preternatural occurrence, 
which is in its whole nature different from the 
miracles of Scripture. 

These same principles may guide us in the 
view which we should take of mesmerism, and 
clairvoyance, and spirit-rapping. As to mes- 
merism, there is every reason to believe that 
there is a series of phenomena which may go 
by this name — till their nature has been more 
thoroughly explored. But mesmeric affections 
so connect themselves with certain pathological 
states of the body and psychological facts, that 
we at once declare them to be natural, and hope 
at last to discover the laws which they obey. 
As to clairvoyance, it is certainly opposed to the 
whole analogy of nature as disclosed by modern 
science. It is also and equally inconsistent 
with the whole analogy of the supernatural reve- 
lation of God in the Word, for nowhere in that 
revelation is there a miraculous event reported 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



339 



except as vouching for, or as a part of, the plan of 
redemption. Clairvoyance has thus the analogy 
both of the mundane and revealed system, against 
it. I do not say, that it could not possibly be 
substantiated by evidence, but the proof urged 
in its behalf is of far too uncertain, and at times 
suspicious, a character to bear up the superstruc- 
ture. In regard to most of the pretended cases, 
I think we are entitled at once to reject them 
without farther inquiry, and, as to others, which 
may look more fair and plausible, it is enough 
to ask the supporters of them to submit to such 
scientific tests as those to which table-turning 
was subjected by Faraday. What is now said of 
clairvoyance applies also to spirit-rapping. But 
if ever such phenomena are established on good 
authority, — which they have not hitherto been, 
and, as I think, are not likely to be, — we would 
seek to construct them into a system, natural, or 
preternatural, or half way between ; and then we 
might have rules by which to distinguish be- 
tween real and pretended cases. Meanwhile, the 
established systems of God, both natural and 
supernatural, are against all such pretensions. 

The principles here enunciated, and so far 
applied, shew at once how we are to answer Mr. 
Powell, when he would place the record of the 
miracles of Scripture alongside of the ordinary 
tales about ghosts, mermaids, and witches. 



340 



ANALOGY BETWEEN THE NATURAL 



CHAPTER IV. 

ANALOGY BETWEEN THE NATUEAL AND SUPER- 
NATUEAL SYSTEMS. 

The word " analogy" is frequently used in our 
common literature as synonymous with " resem- 
blance," and denotes a likeness of any kind. 
But it has a more narrow and technical signifi- 
cation, and denotes a resemblance of relations. 
Thus we speak by "analogy" of a particular prin- 
ciple acting as the foundation of an argument, 
meaning that the principle has a like relation to 
the conclusion, as the foundation has to the 
building erected on it. In natural history, the 
wing of a bird and the wing of a butterfly are 
not reckoned the same organs, but they are said 
to be analogous, because to the animals they dis- 
charge the same functions. In this Chapter the 
phrase is employed in the more rigid sense. I 
am to gather out of the preceding discussions 
the points of resemblance between the natural 
and supernatural systems, in their relation to 
God on the one hand, and to man on the other. 
I do not go so far as to maintain that this single 



AND SUPERNATURAL SYSTEMS. 



341 



circumstance does of itself prove the religious 
system to be supernatural and to have the sanc- 
tion of God. But taken along with other facts 
and considerations, it has a considerable amount 
of force in shewing that the two came from the 
same Being. In a negative way, it has great 
power in answering objections derived from the 
alleged anomalous or lawless character of the 
supernatural. Taking the lowest ground, it 
should lead all who believe in the natural as a 
manifestation of God to give their candid con- 
sideration to the professedly supernatural system, 
which so corresponds to and so fits into the 
natural. 

I. In both we discover a plan developed in 
connected acts. Nature is not a wayless waste ; 
it is a rich territory, divided, allotted, and fenced 
with alleys to walk in, and a provision for the 
wants of those who dwell in it. There are dif- 
ferent systems in nature — as there are different 
systems in the animal body; but as in the 
animal frame the various parts constitute one 
living being, so in the physical universe the 
different portions are made to constitute one 
Cosmos. But we have seen that there is a like 
ordination and subordination in Kevelation. The 
parts, such as the history, the ordinances, the 
prophecy, the doctrine, constitute systems, which 
again combine in one grand system, with the 



342 



ANALOGY BETWEEN THE NATURAL 



Logos as the central attraction and the central 
light. The order of the universe shews that it 
had been purposed in the Divine Mind in eter- 
nity; it also makes it comprehensible by man, 
and invites him to derive instruction from it, 
and to accommodate his actions to it. Similar 
ends are accomplished by the methodical charac- 
ter of revelation ; we are enabled thereby to rise 
to some comprehension of it, to fall in practically 
with its mode of procedure, and to discover in 
it a manifestation of the Divine perfections and 
the evolution of an eternal counsel. 

II. In both there is a progressive plan. The 
progressive plan of nature is seen specially in 
the science of geology. It should be freely ad- 
mitted that we cannot at this present time draw 
out a perfect reconciliation of Scripture and 
geology, as to the appearance of the hving beings 
on the earth's surface. On the one hand, we 
are not quite sure how to read the record in the 
two opening chapters of Genesis ; and on the 
other hand, geology, in opening new truths, is at 
the same time ever disclosing new mysteries. 
But on the very face of the two records — the 
record on parchment and that on stone — there 
is a general correspondence. Both tell us that 
there was a time when there were no plants, no 
animals on the earth. The latest science seems 
to accord with the Word of God, in declaring 



AND SUPERNATURAL SYSTEMS. 343 

that the earth is older than the sun ; that there 
were epochs m our earth's history when it was 
illuminated by a general light, ere that light had 
been concentrated into a central sun. Both an- 
nounce that there has been a progression, from 
the lower to the higher, in the appearance of 
plants and animals on the earth's surface. Both 
assure us that man came upon the scene at a 
comparatively late date. These are surely very 
wonderful correspondences, which should keep 
all men of science from scoffing at the narrative in 
the Word of God. For when science was entirely 
ignorant of all this, it was written there in a 
Book, the general meaning of which is clear and 
explicit.* 

* I have often thought that, in order to settle the questions agitated, 
we would require to know what was the nature of the transaction which 
issued in man appearing upon the earth. Can we be wrong in guessing 
that the mystery which yet hangs over the thorough reconciliation of 
the two records, Mosaic and Geological, will be cleared up when the 
nature of this transaction is made known to us, — it may be, in this 
world as science advances, it may be, only in the world to come ? 
Who will venture to af&rm that the God who has proceeded from the 
beginning in our Cosmos according to the method of type, that is, 
model or exemplar, by animal type in the geological ages, by human 
but still outward type in the Old Testament dispensation, and even 
now by more spiritual type in the New Testament Church, may not 
have proceeded by type likewise in that necessarily wonderful transac- 
tion which ushered man upon the scene ? Von Baer has shewn that the 
development of the animal in the womb proceeds according to a prede- 
termined plan, advancing from the more general to the more special- 
Professor Owen and Dr. Carpenter have shewn pretty satisfactorily 
that there is a parallel advance in the production of animals in the 
geological ages, — an advance from the more general to the more special* 



344 



ANALOGY BETWEEN THE NATURAL 



But the correspondence to which I refer under 
this head, is not that between geological science 
and the Book of Genesis, hut between the pro- 
gressive work on the earth's surface and the 
progressive character of the work of redemption. 
In geology, we have stratum superimposed upon 
stratum in due order, and a pre-ordained advance 
from the lower to the higher plant and animal, 
the earlier being prefigurations and prognostics 
of the later. And in the history of redemption 
we have layer added to layer, and lower life ever 

If these views be correct, — and they are held hy the highest authori- 
ties, — then the growth of the higher animals in the womb is of the same 
type as the successive creations revealed in geology. It has also been 
shewn by geologists that the existing order in organic forms is a type 
of the geologic order in time. Who will venture to say, then, that the 
mysterious transaction at man's creation was not an epitome, a type, of 
what had gone before, just as the scarcely less mysterious transac- 
tion of the infant's growth in the womb is a type of all Palaeontology? 
The account in Genesis may thus be a description of six literal days, as 
representative of six epochs, just as our Lord's prediction of the destruc- 
tion of Jerusalem has, through it, a reference to the final day. Every 
student of ecclesiastical history knows that the experience of the 
individual Christian is an epitome of the experience of the Church at 
large, as a heavenly life in the midst of opposing corruption. Should there 
be any truth in this view, the transaction recorded in the opening of 
Genesis may not be a mere vision, but a reality, — a reality supernatural, 
but in harmony with all natural operation, which is, after all. Divine 
operation, — a reality instructive as any vision, — a reality which retains 
the natural days, as after the type of the natural epochs, and keeps the 
seventh day as a true day, and yet a prefiguration of the Sabbath of 
rest which remaineth for the people of God. This view will thoroughly 
fall in with the account given of the garden of Eden, which we may 
regard as a reality on the earth, yet a prefiguration of the inheritance 
of the saints in heaven. 



AND SUPERNATUBAL SYSTEMS, 



345 



rising to a higher, and a typical system consum- 
mated in Christ the Great Archetype. 

III. Both have a very special relation to man. 
They have also, hoth the one and other, farther 
relations towards other worlds and towards God 
himself, some of which we may discover, but all 
of which can never be known to us. But both 
have a regard to man which we can discern, 
and which we are expected to observe. The 
natural system has a manifest relation to man ; 
it provides a supply for his animal wants ; it fur- 
nishes enjoyments to his emotional nature ; it is 
admirably suited to his searching and contem- 
plative intellect. We are told here and there in 
the Scriptures, that the grand supernatural event, 
the Incarnation of the Son of God, has a respect 
to other worlds ; but it has a special reference to 
man, to his restoration and regeneration ; being 
addressed to his higher and deeper, as the other 
is to his superficial and material wants ; having 
in view to elevate his moral and spiritual charac- 
ter, as the other has to improve his intellectual 
and emotional constitution. 

IV. Both are so far understood, but neither is 
fully understood. We do understand so much 
of nature, and we are ever understanding more, 
and are encouraged to seek after higher and ever 
higher knowledge. Still we can never compre- 
hend the whole. Placed as we are in the centre 



346 



ANALOGY BETWEEN THE NATURAL 



of boundless space, and in the middle of eternal 
ages, we can discern only a few objects imme- 
diately around us, and the others fade in outline, 
as they are removed from us by distance, till at 
length they lie altogether beyond our vision. 
Nay, it would seem as if the wider the bounda- 
ries of knowledge are pushed, and the greater 
the space illuminated by the torch of science, 
the greater in proportion the bounding sphere 
into which no rays will penetrate, — just as when 
(to use an old comparison) we strike up a light 
in the midst of darkness, in very proportion as 
the light becomes stronger so does also that sur- 
face, black and dark, which is rendered visible. 
It is the same with the supernatural light vouch- 
safed. All who are blessed with the light of 
revelation can know something of the action, 
something even of the laws and of the theory of 
the mediatorial work of Christ. Every one can 
see what God intends by it; every one may 
know what he ought to do to secure the bless- 
ings. We all see enough of the Gospel to dis- 
cover it to be the Power of God, and the Wisdom 
of God, and the Goodness of God. By a closer 
study of the Word, and by an experimental 
acquaintance with its truths, many obtain a 
deeper view of its mysteries — that is, of truths 
once hid, but now revealed. But, after all, there 
is much which remains, and must ever remain 



AND SUPERNATURAL SYSTEMS. 



,34T 



uncomprehended and incomprehensMe. In re- 
gard both to natural and spiritual things, we live 
in a world " where day and night alternate," — in 
the light, we go everywhere accompanied by our 
own shadow. 

V. In both we can accommodate ourselves to 
modes of procedures on the part of God which 
we do not fully comprehend. Thus, in God's 
natural economy we all act upon laws, the 
precise nature of which is very much unknown 
to us. Mankind conformed to and profited by 
the regularity of the seasons, long before they 
knew any thing of those cosmical arrangements 
which give us the return of seedtime and harvest, 
of summer and winter. We act upon empirical 
knowledge as to the springing and growth of the 
plant, while we are entirely ignorant of the 
chemical and vital agencies by which the regular 
result is effected. We guide and control magne- 
tism and electricity, and turn them to most 
important practical uses, and all the while the 
•most advanced science cannot tell us what is the 
nature of these agents. It is much the same in 
the supernatural economies of God. As much is 
always revealed as enables us to exercise faith, and 
to conduct courses of practical action, but seldom 
enough to make us understand all the bearings 
and relations of the doctrine. It is thus that 
we must believe in much which we cannot fully 



348 



ANALOGY BETWEEN THE NATURAL 



comprehend ; believe in the eternity of God, 
while we cannot grasp it as a positive concep- 
tion ; believe in the triune nature of God, while 
we cannot explain the mysteries of the relation 
of the one to the other, and of the three to the 
one. It is thus, too, that we use the appointed 
means for securing the spiritual blessings, and 
pray for the Spirit of God to give efficacy to 
them, while we are entirely ignorant of the way 
in which the Spirit works, and of the relation 
between his operations and the instrumentahty 
which we have employed. 

VI. In both we use means, and yet know that 
the end may depend on arrangements which axe 
made by a Higher Power. It is thus that, in the 
affairs of this world, all prudent men are active 
and industrious in the hope of reaching, if not 
wealth, at least a competence of earthly neces- 
saries and blessings ; and it is usual that these 
means are made to secure the desired result; 
yet it will happen not unfrequently that these 
virtues may be sedulously practised — and the ex- 
pected consequences fail, because of some cross 
incident occurring in the providence of God, 
because of the folly or treachery of some one 
who had been trusted apparently on good grounds, 
or by a calamity which the person had no reason 
to fear, produced by agencies over which he had 
no control. By this double provision of God's 



AND SUPEnNATUJRAL SYSTEMS, 349 

natural providence, mankind are at one and the 
same time allured to activity and made to see 
that their exertions may after all be unsuccessful; 
encouraged to persevere, and yet taught impres- 
sively that they are dependent on the plans of a 
Higher Wisdom. In like manner, the believer is 
commanded to labour and pray, to work out his 
salvation with fear and trembling; and he is 
encouraged to do so by a reasonable prospect of 
success ; but he is taught at the same time that 
every spiritual grace is wrought in him by the 
power of God, and that it is God that worketh in 
us both to will and to do of his good pleasure. No 
doubt there is this difference between the two king- 
doms — the kingdom of nature and the kingdom of 
grace — that in the former the means themselves 
tend to produce their ends, and do produce them 
except when they are thwarted by natural agen- 
cies ; whereas in the latter the means secure the 
end only so far as there is a Divine Power work- 
ing in them. But this difference of the mode 
only evinces the need of supernatural power to 
accomphsh high spiritual ends, and impresses us 
the more with the correspondence of the two 
economies, which thus secure similar ends by 
a difference of means. 

VII. In both, the moral is higher than the 
spiritual. Bishop Butler has shewn, that when 
we properly interpret our moral nature, it is 



350 ANALOGY BETWEEN TEE NATURAL 

found to declare not only that moral good is to 
be commended, but that it is higher than any 
other good, higher than the merely pleasurable, 
higher than the simply beautiful ; and other 
moralists have shewn, from the intimations of 
our moral reason, that the law of God is eternal 
and immutable. But every one who has taken 
a profound view of the Gospel provision knows, 
that all this is presupposed in it, and that it was 
because of the everlasting and essential holiness 
of God and of the unbending character of his 
law, that the Son of God behoved to suffer and 
to die, in order that God's everlasting purposes 
of grace might be carried out. 

VIII. The one system fits into the other. 
This is the most characteristic and wonderful 
point of correspondence. The two have not 
only a likeness in mode and manner, in style 
and means, but the one is adapted to the 
other, — as in the natural kingdom the mineral 
is adapted to the plant and the plant to the 
mineral, and the sky above to the earth beneath. 
Where the one ends the other begins, where the 
lower fails the higher comes in and succeeds. 
The natural cries out for something which it 
feels that it wants, the supernatural answers the 
cry, and supplies what is needed. And yet the 
supernatural does not destroy the natural, but 
uses it, elevates it, and sanctifies it. The super* 



AND STIFERNATURAL SYSTEMS. 351 

natural, though far above the natural, joms on 
to it, and embraces and canopies it, as the 
heavens do the earth. 

Some may be inclined to look on the analogies 
we have traced merely as furnishing profitable 
matter for meditation, fitted to excite admiration 
and kindle adoration on the part of those already 
behevers in revelation. Even so, they will have 
served a good end. But I am inclined to think 
that they have also considerable force as evi- 
dences of the truth of Christianity. The two 
do look as if they had the same all wise and good 
God for their author. We discover everywhere 
a certain style, and method, and end in God's 
operations, which enable us easily to recognize 
them as His works. The plant is not the same 
as the animal, the crystal on the earth is not the 
same as the star in heaven, but we see at once 
that he who made the one also made the other. 
It should be acknowledged by all that the natu- 
ral structure is not the same as the spiritual ; 
but there is a sameness in the style and plan 
which suffice to shew that they are both designs 
of the same Great Architect. 

It should be observed that the argument is 
not drawn simply from a vague general resem- 
blance. It is derived from the relation of each 
to God and to man, from the fitting of the one 
into the other, and from the common ends of 



352 



TEE NATTJRAL AND SUFERKATURAL. 



beneficence and of righteousness served by them. 
We have a right to demand of the opponents of 
Christianity that they shev^ how this correspon- 
dence could have arisen. The supposition that 
it has been produced by studious design, on the 
part of the human framers of the supposed 
supernatural system, needs no confutation. But 
-it is scarcely less preposterous to suppose, that it 
can have proceeded from the unconscious opera- 
tion of human nature through long ages. The 
correspondence is far too free in its manner to 
allow of the former supposition; it is far too 
congruous and consistent in its method to allow 
of the latter ; it is far too moral and spiritual to 
admit of either. The most reasonable conclu- 
sion is, that the two are compartments of one 
great building; not antagonistic, but adaptive; 
not conflicting, but corresponding ; not contra- 
dictory, but complementary. 



" Truth, so far, in my book ; — the truth which draws 
Through all things upwards; that a twofold world 
Must go to a perfect cosmos ; Natural things 
And Spiritual." 



APPENDIX. 



Art. I.— oxford PHILOSOPHY. 

Within the last eventful age we have had two impor- 
tant religious movements originating in Oxford — the 
one coming to a head about thirty years ago, and the 
other making its appearance within the last few years. 
It has been shewn again and again that these two have 
a closer connexion than the superficial thinker might 
imagine. There is the old maxim of extremes meeting, 
of extremes producing each other ; there is the more 
modern law of action being followed by an equal re- 
action. Plutarch shewed how it is that superstition 
produces atheism : thinking men, put into a state of 
merriment or of pain by the absurdities of an abject su- 
perstition, are tempted to cast away all faith. But, in 
addition to the action of these more general laws, the 
leaders of the medieval school had exposed those who 
looked up to them to more particular and fatal in- 
fluences. They took special pains to shew that not 
only human reason and natural religion, but the Word 
of God itself, cannot be relied on. Their sincere aim 
was to induce their followers to hand themselves over 
unreservedly to the teaching of the Church. The dis- 
ciples went so far with them. They gave up the ordi- 
nary arguments for the existence of a personal God, 
and faith in the Bible as an infallible guide; but 
many of them became restive when they were taught 
to fall back on Church principles, and, following out 
the premises given them, they have arrived at con- 
clusions very different from those which their precep- 
tors anticipated. 

Z 



354 



AFFENBIX. 



But, instead of speculating on the causes whicli have 
produced what has already taken place, it is of more 
importance to inquire what is likely to he the issue, in 
the next few years, of the causes operating at this pre- 
sent moment. 

So far as I have means of judging, it appears to me 
that the two philosophic lights in Oxford at the present 
time are Kant, as modified hy Sir W. Hamilton and 
Dr. Mansel, and Mr. John S. Mill in his integrity. Let 
us inquire how the youth is equipped who has to form an 
independent opinion, on the great religious questions 
started, after having heen disciplined in the forms of 
Kant, and having drunk into the spirit of Mill. 

Kant has taught him that there are deep speculative 
principles in the mind, but that these have no objective 
value whatever, and guarantee nothing as to the real 
world, nay, land us in contradictions when we suppose 
them to have an application to things. He is told that 
cause and eifect have links given them by the mind^ but 
may have no connexion in the actual world or beyond 
it. He is instructed that we cannot prove the existence 
of God from his works, and is referred to some other 
way of reaching the Divine Being which the student 
does not very well understand ; but so far as he com- 
prehends it, he does not deem it very satisfactory, for if 
the speculative reason be delusive, why may not the 
moral reason also be deceptive ? 

I have frequently taken occasion to express my high 
opinion of the philosophy of the late Sir W. Hamilton. 
I believe that he has added immensely to our know- 
ledge of every department of the human mind, and 
that his criticism of the philosophy of the Absolute 
has not been answered, and never will be answered. 
But I have always regretted that he adopted so many 
of the principles of Kant. He allows that the mind 
starts with phenomena in the se^nse of appearances, and 
not with things, and that the mind, in its knowledge 
of objects, adds elements of its own. "Suppose that 
the total object of consciousness in perception^ 12 ; 



APFEXBIX, 355 

and suppose that the external reality contributes 6^ the 
material sense 3, and the mind 3 ; this may enable you 
to form some rude conjecture of the nature of the object 
of perception" {MetajyJi. vol. ii. p. 129). His philo- 
sophy, beginning in nescience, must end in nescience. 
He thus sums up the results reached by him in com- 
paring his philosophy of the Conditioned with that of 
the Absolute : " In one respect both coincide, for both 
agree that the knowledge of nothing is the principle 
or result of all true philosophy ; ^ Scire Nihil — studium 
quo nos laetamur utrique.' But the one doctrine main- 
taining that the Nothing must yield everything is a 
philosophic omniscience ; whereas, the other holding 
that Nothing can yield nothing, is a philosophic 
nescience. In other words, the doctrine of the un- 
conditioned is a philosophy confessing relative igno- 
rance, but professing absolute knowledge ; while the 
doctrine of the conditioned is a philosophy professing 
relative knowledge, but confessing absolute ignorance " 
{Discuss, p. 609). Following out these principles, he 
declares that the argument for the Divine existence, 
got by human intelligence, is inconclusive ; and, though 
he stands up for it, I cannot see how even the moral 
argument remains, if " good and bad " {Discuss, p. 604) 
are subject to the same all-sweeping system of relativity 
and nescience. Time and space are forms of the 
mind ; our conviction as to cause and effect is a mere 
impotency, implying no objective existence ; and the 
highest effort of philosophy is to shew us that God is 
unknowable in his real nature. Nor is his position much 
amended by his handing us over, after he has landed 
us in nescience, to a faith of which he gives no account, 
and which is well described by Dr. Dorner as the 
despair of knowledge rather than anything else.* 

* For years past, I have been calling on the school of Hamilton to give 
lis some account of the nature and claims of tluvt unexplained f.iith, on 
•which they ever fail back, when their nescience leads thtm to conclusions 
which alarm them. An able aud faithful disciple admits, " The absolute 
or infinite is cast beyoud the sphere of thought and science ; it is still, 
however, allowed by Hamilton to remain in some sense in consciousness, 



356 



AFFENBIX. 



I have ever felt great pleasure in giving my feeble 
testimony to the pre-eminent merits of Dr. Mansel, as 
a scholar and a philosopher. I am prepared to main- 
tain, that his objections to the a priori theologies of 
the absolute have not been answered, and that his 
services, in so thoroughly undermining the ambitious 
speculations which w^ere coming in upon us, directly 
or indirectly, from the schools of Schleiermacher and 
Hegel, have entitled him to the perpetual gratitude 
of all sound thinkers and friends of Christian truth. 
But I have ever regretted that he should have adopted 
so many of the principles of Kant, and that he should 
have followed so implicitly the nescient philosophy of 
Sir W. Hamilton. Eminently successful in attack, I 
cannot see that he ha,s any body of fundamental truths 
on which to rear a sound philosophy, or by which to 
lend positive aid to Christian theology. The works 
which have been called forth by these discussions, such 
as those of Chretien {Letter to Mr. 3Iaurice) ; of 
Young {Reason and Faith) ; of Calderwood {Philo- 
sopliy of the hifinite. Second Edition) ; of Robins {A 
Defence of the Faith) ; of Professor Goldwin Smith 
{Rational Religion, &c.) of Timologus {Scoto- Oxonian 
Philosophij) — shew that there are minds of a high 
order which cannot be made to submit to the philoso- 
phic and religious nescience w^hich it is attempted to 
impose on them. In particular, there has been a 
general disposition to take exceptions to the view 
which is given of the conceptions of morality furnished 
by the moral reason ; these. Dr. Mansel thinks, are 
and must be relative to the structure of our minds, 
and may not at all represent the absolute or divine 
morality. But, in fact, these defective views of our 

for it is grasped by faith, and faith is a conscious act. The question, 
accordingly, at once meets us — In what sense, and how far, can there be 
an object within consciousness, which is not properly within thought or 
knowledge? In other words, how far is our faith in the infinite intelli- 
gent and intelligible? This point demands farther and more detailed 
treatment than it has met with either at the hands of Sir W. Hamilton 
himself, or any one who has sought to carry out his principles." — hnp. 
Diet. Univ. Biog. Art., Hamilton, Sir W., by J. V. (Professor Veitch.) 



APPENDIX. 



357 



moral cognitions originate in a defective philosophy, 
which sets out with the dogma that we cannot know 
anything as it is. 

I ventured, at a very early date, to intimate my ap- 
prehensions that the principles which lie at the foun- 
dation of the philosophy of Sir W. Hamilton might be 
turned to sceptical purposes {Method of Divifie Govern- 
ment^ Appendix to Fourth Edition, 1854, and subse- 
quent Editions). Very soon after the publication of 
Mansel's Limits of Religious Thought^ and when the 
religious press was unanimous in approving of it, I 
pointed out fundamental defects in the principles pro- 
ceeded on, which I feared that those opposed to reli- 
gion might not be slow to turn to purposes of their own 
(Article in North British Review, February, 1859, on 
Intuitional Theology and Limits of Religious Thought^ 
and Intuitions of the Mind, 1860), I am sorry to say 
that these fears have been too speedily realised. Mr. 
Mill {Logic^ I. iii. 5), for his own purposes, quotes with 
approbation the language of Hamilton — " All that we 
know is, therefore, phenomenal, — phenomenal of the 
unknown." Professor Alexander Bain, of the same 
school, seizes on the doctrine of relativity, and shows 
that we are not entitled to look on mind or matter as 
independent existences (^The Emotions and the Will 
641 — 646). Mr. Powell has called in the same philo- 
sophy to his aid, and quotes with approbation the state- 
ment of Dr. Mansel, that " creation is to human 
thought inconceivable" {^The Order of Nature, p. 256). 
Dr. Duncanson, of the Westminster Review School, has 
drawn the religious conclusion, which I fear many 
others will draw — " There is a still more advanced 
stage of opinion, but as it has as yet been entered by 
a very few, it is unnecessary to do more than notice it 
here. All knowledge is of phenomena ; things by 
themselves cannot be known from the very nature of 
knowledge." " To represent the supernatural as spiri- 
tual, is to assume that it may be known. When we 
say that the supernatural is the spiritual, we offer an 



358 



AFPENDIX. 



explanation of it, for we class it with personal agency. 
The supernatural agent may be represented as more 
mysterious than a human being, but he is conceivable 
only to the extent he is assimilated to humanity. But 
a thing that is explained must be part of the system 
which supplies the explanation ; so that the super- 
natural, when explained, ceases to be supernatural. 
The spiritual may be the highest form by which we 
can symbolize the supernatural, but it is far from 
representing the unknowable, as the most concrete and 
sensible form. The supernatural, then, is not the 
spiritual, but simply the unthinkable, the . uncondi- 
tioned, or infinite" (The Providence of God, 87, 88.)* 
To complete the succession, Mr, Herbert Spencer 
avows that he is to rear his huge system of what 
most men would call atheism, on the principles given 
him by Hamilton and Mansel, and has actually begun 
to raise his structure with great intellectual vigor, but 
with sad defects in his original principles, and mighty 
gaps in his deductions. (See Circular announcing his 
Works, and Fh^st Principles?) 

Turning to Mr. Mill, we find him represented by 
competent witnesses as the person who, at this pre- 
sent time, exercises the greatest influence over the 
young thought of Oxford. M. Taine opens an ar- 

* It is curious to observe how nearly a writer in the North British 
Review comes to this nescience. An able and elaborate article in the 
number for May, 1861, thus closes; — " Truth, like the Deity, is bid in 
darkness. It is not that we are unable to divine the mysteries of the soul 
and God ; the simplest phenomenon of sense defies our wit. Of the future 
destinies of philosophy it is in vain to speak. Phenomena we can observe — 
their laws we are able to ascertain — existence is beyond our ken. The 
riddle of the sphynx has never yet been read. The veil of Isis has never 
yet been drawn. The hieroglyphics of the universe are yet undeciphered." 
If it is meant that wo do not knovr existence apart from things existing, 
I admit the statement, which is worth nothing, for there can be no such 
thing as existence apart from things existing. But if it is meant that we 
do not know things, say ourselves or God, as existing, the statement may 
form the first stone in a system of universal scepticism. I have evidence 
that in Scotland the younger metaphysical talent at present runs along the 
" conditions" and " relations" of Hamilton — as along rails set for it ; just 
as, thirty years ago, it flew off with the " feelings" and " suggestions" of 
Erown. It remains to be seen what influence this " Know-Nothing" philo- 
sophy is to exercise on the religious thought of Scotland. 



APFENBIX. 



359 



tide on " Contemporary English Philosophy" in the 
Revue des Deux Mondes for March, 1861, by telling 
us that when he was at the meeting of the British 
Association for the Promotion of Science, at Oxford, 
in 1860, he met a young Englishman of genius whom 
he catechised as to the philosophy of his country. 
After listening to the scientific papers, and going 
through the museums, the Frenchman says to the 
Englishman, " You have no philosophers. You have 
savans, hut not thinkers." The young English- 
man, thrown upon his defence, names, as the ori- 
ginal thinkers of England, Mr. Jowett, of the 
" Essays and Reviews," and Mr. Mill ! The answer 
is quite characteristic of a young Oxonian who 
has caught the present spirit of his university. 
Testimonies to the same effect might be quoted from 
late Numbers of Macmillan^s Magazine, and the 
Literary Gazette, as to the sway w^hich Mr. Mill has 
over thought at Oxford. I suppose we may reckon 
the Saturday Retieio as a fair sample of Young 
Oxford (quite as much so as the equally clever and 
equally flippant and arrogant EdinLurgh Revieio, at 
the beginning of the century, was of the then Young 
Edinburgh) ; and any one may see that certain w^riters 
in that Review are erudite in Mr. Mill, and erudite 
in no other philosophy. 

Every one who has himself learned to think must 
speak with profound respect of Mr. Mill. His opi- 
nions on all questions of social science are always 
worthy of being carefully weighed. Many of the 
principles of his inductive logic are well founded. 
But underneath all his opinions on more practical 
matters there is a fundamentally defective philosophy, 
which is ever cropping out. As I have said elsewhere : — 
"The only satisfactory admission of Mr. Mill is, 
' whatever is known to us by consciousness is known 
beyond the possibility of question.' {Logic, Introd. 
p. 6.) What does this admission amount to ? First, 
as to self, or mind, he says, ' But what this being 



360 APPENDIX. 

is, althougli it is myself, I have no knowledge, other 
than the series of its states of consciousness.' As to 
hody, he says the reasonable opinion is, that it is the 
^hidden external cause to which we refer our sen- 
sations.' (I. iii. 8.) Sensation is our only primary 
mental operation in regard to an external world, 
and perception is discarded * as an obscure w^ord.' 
(Compare Dissertations, vol. i., p. 94.) ' There 
is not the slightest reason for believing that what 
we call the sensible qualities of the object are a type 
of anything inherent in itself, or bear any affinity 
to its own nature.' 'Why should matter resemble 
our sensations V {Logic, I., iii. 7.) Speaking of the 
feelings which are excited by bodies, and the powers 
or properties whereby they are excited, he says that 
he includes these ' rather in compliance with com- 
mon opinion, and because their existence is taken 
for granted in the common language, from which I 
cannot deviate, than because the recognition of such 
powers or properties appears to be warranted by a 
sound philosophy.'" Mr. Mill labours to shew that 
there is no necessary truth, and that it is quite con- 
ceivable that, at a reasonable distance beyond our 
world, the principle of cause and effect may not 
operate. It is also well known that he is by far the 
ablest and most plausible defender of utilitarianism 
in our day. 

Now the question arises. What sort of new school 
is likely to rise out of Oxford under these influences ? 
I put the question, and it is for those who watch 
over the principles of the rising generation in that 
university to answer it. What I fear is a combina- 
tion of the empty forms of Kant, with the phenomenal 
philosophy of Comte and Mill; and the impression 
left will be, that it is useless to inquire into religion, 
since no certainty can be attained on such a subject. 
To all this I have no doubt a vigorous opposition will 
be offered, but I anticipate it will be on extreme 
grounds J which can issue only in a rationalism or 



APFENBIX. »>0i 

intuitionalism which overrides the Word of God; 
and religious thought will go, as it has done for the 
last age, hy oscillations — ever swinging past the 
point of rest. 

Bacon says, " As concerning Divine Philosophy, or 
Natural Theology, it is that knowledge or rudiment of 
knowledge concerning God, which may he obtained by 
the contemplation of his creatures ; which knowledge 
may be truly termed divine in respect of the object, and 
natural in respect of the light. The bounds of this 
knowledge are, that it sufficeth to convince atheism, 
but not to inform religion" {Advanc. of Learnijig, 
Bk. II). It can easily be shewn that this is the posi- 
tion which has been taken by the great divines of the 
Anglican Church, and by British theologians generally.* 
They have maintained with wonderful unanimity that 
man's reason, intellectual and moral, can do something 
in religion, but that it cannot do everything ; that it 
can conduct us to thoroughly ascertained and positive 
truth concerning God, though it cannot announce how 
we, as sinners, may approach him with acceptance. 
The few divines in our country, such as B shop Peter 
Browne of Cork, who held that man cannot rise to any 
proper knowledge of God by the light of nature, have 
never had much influence over thought, or been sup- 
posed to speak the general mind of the Churches of 
these lands. On the other hand, those who have given 
to natural reason a sufficiency in itself, or have consti- 
tuted it into a " verifying" faculty to determine what 
we should take and what we should reject in Scripture, 
have been characterized as rationalists, and have never 
been held as representing the Christian Churches in 
these lands. I look on the position thus taken up by 
the great body of British theologians as the right, the 

* This is scarcely the place (another opportunity may present itself) 
for offering any more elaborate defence of this position from the objections 
taken against it, and against me for holding it, by Dr. Dorner, of Gott.n- 
gen, in his long, and able, and candid review of Plamilton, Mansol, 
Maurice, Fitzgerald, and myself, in an Article (occasioned by my " Lef^er 
to the German Churches ") in the '* Jahrbiicher fiir Deutsche fheologie'" 
for 1861. 



362 



APPENDIX. 



wise, and the safe one ; and we peril the cause of re- 
ligion if we depart from it to one side or other. I 
believe it to be the very position taken by the Apostle 
Paul in the opening of the Epistle to the Romans, and 
indeed by the inspired writers all throughout the Scrip- 
tures. The Bible comes to us as the Word of God, — 
pre-supposing that we believe in God, on the natural 
evidence supplied by h"s works without and convictions 
within. Pre-supposiiig that God and his eternal power 
and godhead may be thus so far known — yes, known 
{yoohiMiva zaOoparai is the language used, Rom. i. 20) — it 
comes to us to make him more fully knowni, as to what 
he is in himself, and as to w4iat he has done for man. 
The great philosophers of our country have held, with 
Bacon, " that by the contemplation of nature, to induce 
and enforce the acknowledgment of God, and to demon- 
strate his powder, providence, and goodness, is an excel- 
lent argument" {Advanc. of Learning, Bk. II.) ; and 
I hope they will c(mtinue to do so in England and in 
Scotland, despite the authority of Kant and Hamilton. 
The great theologians of our country, and of Germany 
too, have drawn their most powerful arguments in 
behalf of the Bible as the Word of God from the reve- 
lations given to man by the " law of conscience which 
is a sparkle of his first estate," of the perfect and un- 
changeable morality of God; and I trust they will 
never allow themselves to be drawn from this by the 
temptation held out to them, of lowering the pretensions 
of rationalists by taking lower and negative grounds on 
the subject of man's moral reason. On the other hand, 
they must beware, lest the extreme position taken by 
the nescient school should allure them to go to the 
opposite extrame, and to ascribe to unaided human 
reason a sufficiency ^ which all history and all experience 
shew that it has never realized. The constant appeals 
which are being made in our day to the idea of the in- 
finite and the moral reason, should induce all thinkers 
to set about an earnest inquiry, pursued in the induc- 
tive manner, as to the precise conceptions aiid beliefs 



AFFENBIX. 



363 



wliich the human mind entertains in regard to infinity, 
and as to the intimations actually made by the con- 
science. As the result of such an investio^atioiij it will 
be found that we have positive and very profound con- 
ceptions on such subjects, but that they are utterly, 
and obviously, and deplorably insufficient " to inform 
religion." 



Art. 11.— BUNSEN and GERMAN THEOLOGY. 

As the name of Bunsen has been employed for a 
purpose in one of the " Essays and Reviews," and as 
I have had occasion more than once to refer to that 
distinguished man, I feel as if it were due to bis 
memory to give some particulars of the delightful 
intercourse which I had with him, several hours every 
day for five successive days, in the month of August^, 
1858. 

It was on the afternoon of Tuesday, August 4, that 
I waited on him at his pleasant villa, at Charlotten- 
burg, near Heidelberg, with a letter of introduction, 
with which I had been favoured, from a distinguished 
British nobleman, a special friend of Bunsen's. As I 
■went up to his residence, a carriage passed out having 
in it a gentleman of a singularly grave and noble 
countenance, and I was sure this must be Bunsen 
himself. Not finding him at home, I left ray card and 
introductions, and the same evening I had a^ kind 
letter from him inviting me to visit him next day, and 
pressing me to give him as much of my time as possible. 
Next day I secured my first interview with him, and 
on each successive day, to the Sunday following, inclu- 
sive, I waited on him by appointment, at dinner, or for 
coffee, or for tea, and on each occasion had lengthened 
conversations with him. And what a talker ! Inte- 
resting as many of his writings are, they are not nearly 
so much so as was his conversation. The man himself 



364 



APFEIS-JDIX. 



was an object of the highest interest to all who could 
appreciate him. With a head that rose like a dome, 
he had a heart from which there glowed a genial heat 
as from a domestic fire. He talked of education in 
Germany and in England, of religion, of theology, of 
philosophy, of the state of the Romish and Protestant 
Churches on the Continent, and interspersed the grand 
theoretical views which he delighted to expound with 
anecdotes of kings, statesmen, philosophers, and theo- 
logians of the highest name, with whom he had been 
intimate. But his noble enthusiasm ever kindled into 
the brightest flame when he spread out before me his 
own intended works, as illustrative of the Bible, of 
philosophy, and history, and fitted to help on the 
education of the race. I have met with many talented 
men, with many good men, with not a few men of 
genius ; but I have had the privilege of holding con- 
fidential intercourse with only three whom I reckoned 
" great men." One, the greatest, I think — Dr. Chal- 
mers — ever rises up before my memory as a mountain, 
standing fair, and clear, and large. The second, 
Hugh Miller, rises as a bold rocky promontory, covered 
all over with numberless plants of wild exquisite 
beauty. The third, Bunsen, stretches out before me 
wide, and lovely, and fertile — like the plains of Lom- 
bardy which I had just passed through before visiting 
him. 

I have referred to the fondness with which he dwelt 
on his contemplated publications. He was now, in 
his retirement, to give to the world the views on all 
subjects, historical, philosophical, and theological, which 
had burst upon him in their freshness Avhen he spent 
so many of his youthful years in Kome. I confess, 
however, that, deeply interested as was in his specu- 
lations — as these came forth with such a warmth and 
radiance from his own lips — I had all the while an 
impression that he would require to live to an ante- 
diluvian age in order to commit all his theories to 
wiiting^ — and also a very strong conviction that his 



APPENDIX, 365 

views belonged to the past age rather than the present, 
and that some of them would not, in fact, promote the 
cause of religion which he had so much at heart. It 
ever came out, that he drew no distinction between 
the natural and preternatural. He was a firm believer 
in mesmerism and clairvoyance (in favour of them he 
mentioned some circumstances which seemed to me to 
have no evidential value), and was apt to connect them 
with the inspiration of the writers of the Bible.* 

He talked in terms of intense affection of Alexander 
von Humboldt, with whom I had had some intercourse 
a short time before. My interview with that illustrious 
man was held by appointment (through Herr Sydow 
who had introduced me to him), in his own house in 
Berlin, on June 15th of the same year, only a few 
months before his decease. The conversation began 
by his referring to my published views as to the corres- 
pondence between the ramification of the plant and 
the venation of its leaves, as shewing that there is a 
unity of plan and structure throughout the plant, — to 
the general doctrine he gave his decided adherence, 
and said that he had himself noticed the correspon- 
dence. He passed on to discourse of the injurious 
imputations which had been cast on his religious prin- 
ciples by certain Jesuits, and in doing so, spoke in 
terms of strong indignation of the way in which the 
great German Leibnitz, had sought to prejudice the 
Electress of Brandenburg against the English Newton, 
because of the supposed irreligious tendencies of his 
works. He branched off into the latest discoveries 
in science ; shewed me curious natural objects which 
he had picked up in various parts of the world ; he 
talked of the plurality of worlds, which he believed in as 

* Since writing the above my eye has alighted on a passage in one of 
Schleiermacher's Letters, written in 1817 {Life, translated by F. Rowan, 
p, 260), in which, speaking of animal magnetism, he says : — '"' My opinion, 
in regard to the nature of these mental phenomena and to their truth is 
this : any distinction between the natural and supernatural, between the 
comprehensible and the incomprehensible, I do not, upon the whole, reco"-- 
nize. 



366 



APPEXBIX. 



being most consonant with "his conception of God ; and 
he encouraged me to speak of religion and of the recon- 
ciling work of the Saviour. '^^ You are going to visit 
Bunsen," he said ; " you must by all means do so ;" 
and he proceeded to speak of him in the language of 
the greatest admiration and affection, adding, " I do 
not understand some of his writings, but I have formed 
the very highest opinion of his Bibelwerk." It is not 
for one who had so imperfect an acquaintance with 
Humboldt as 1 had to attempt to reconcile what he 
said to me with harsh expressions about Bunsen scat- 
tered throughout his letters to Varnhagen. Were his 
feelings towards Bunsen softened in his later days ? 
Or was he rejoicing in the Bibelwerk because he saw 
that it would further very different ends from those 
contemplated by Bunsen ? On my reporting to Bunsen 
how kindly Humboldt had spoken of him, he said, " I 
am bringing out a certain portion of my Bibelwerk 
before other parts which should come earlier^ in order 
that it may fall under the eye of Humboldt ere he is 
removed from us." The way he said this shewed the 
great love he had for Humboldt ; and he intimated 
pretty plainly that he hoped the part of the Bibelwerk 
to which he referred might help to draw Humboldt 
towards deeper religious convictions. 

Whether any such end was accomplished, I have no 
means of knowing. I have doubts as to whether the 
means were fitted to attain the object fondly desired. 
For Bunsen was already in a very ambiguous position 
in his own country. Respected and beloved by all — 
except the enemies of civil and religious liberty — his 
speculations, philosophical or theological, carried^ I 
found, very little weight in Germany. The great 
divines of the orthodox school, while they loved him 
for his piety, just regretted the more that in his opinions 
as to the authenticity and inspiration of the Old Testa- 
ment he was adhering to views which had been very 
prevalent in the earlier part of the century, but had 
been for years abandoned by all who had given their 



APPENDIX. 



367 



attention to the subject. The rationalists, who, in the 
days of their strength, had hated Bunsen for his warm 
evangelical piety, were rejoicing, now that the tide was 
against them, that they had in him an unconscious 
auxiliary in their work of undermining the inspiration 
of the Bible, — but they set no value whatever on his 
own speculations and opinions. His venerated name 
is being extensively used by the rationalists of this 
country; it is right that they should know that he ever 
spoke of rationalism in terms of strongest disapproba- 
tion and aversion, and he wished it to be known every- 
where that he identified himself with the living 
evangelical piety of Britain. While Bunsen was able 
to retain his piety, in spite of the vagueness and wan- 
derings of his speculative opinions, it is difficult to see 
how any young man trained in the creed left to Bunsen 
could ever rise to a belief in the Saviour. 

What I have now said indicates pretty clearly the 
state of theological belief of late years in Germany. 
The rationalists of the two last ages, though their im- 
mediate power was restricted to their students in the 
universities, had yet, through them, as they scattered 
through the country, spread a most baleful influence, 
resulting in a general disregard of religion among all 
classes, beginning with the educated and going down to 
the lowest. But since 1848 — when the country became 
alarmed at the extremes to which infidelity led — there 
has been a reaction in favour of orthodox doctrine and 
evangelical sentiments. This has been specially felt by 
students intending for the pastoral office, who have 
very much abandoned the old rationalistic and Hegelian 
professors, and are crowding the class-rooms of those 
who defend the inspiration of Scripture and the old 
doctrines of salvation by the cross of Christ. The great 
German theologians of the age now passing away, and of 
the present ago have, with unmatched erudition and pro- 
found speculative ability, defended the Bible from the 
assaults made upon it ; and as it was from Germany we 
got the bane, so it is from Germany, or rather from 



368 



APPENDIX. 



Englisli writers who can use the stores of German 
learning, that we must look for the antidote. 

But to return to Bunsen. I am able to say — what T 
believe I can say of no other with whom I had so much 
intercourse — that we never conversed during these five 
days, for ten minutes at a time, without his return- 
ing, however far he might be off, to his Bible and his 
Saviour, as the objects that were evidently the dearest 
to him. Some of my British readers will be astonished 
when I have to add, that one evening he told me that 
he '' was not sure about allowing that God is a Being, 
and that he certainly could not admit that God is a 
Person." The question will be asked, How was it 
possible for one entertaining such theoretical views to 
love his God and Saviour, as Bunsen seemed to love 
them, supremely ? Having a considerable acquaintance 
with the Hegelian philosophy, and having only a short 
time before listened to the lectures of some of the most 
devoted disciples of that school, I think I can under- 
stand this inconsistency, though I would never think of 
defending it. Bunsen had been trained in the first 
quarter of this century, when Schelling and Hegel (of 
whom he always spoke with profound admiration) ruled 
in the universities, and he had so lost himself in ideal 
distinctions and nomenclature, that his words were not 
to be interpreted as if the same expressions had been 
used by another man. He was for ever talking, in 
Kantian phraseology, of the forms of space and time, 
and of the manifestations of God in space and time. I 
laboured to shew that there were other intuitive convic- 
tions in the mind as well as those of space and time, 
and, in particular, that we all had an immediate 
consciousness of ourselves as persons, and that this 
conscious personality, duly followed out, raised our 
minds to the contemplation of God as a Being and a 
Person. One evening, in his house, I thought I had 
shut him up to a point, but the conversation was 
interrupted by the breaking up of the large company. 
We met next day, by appointment, to resume the dis- 



APPENDIX. 



369 



cussion^ but amid the flow of his grand conceptions 
I never scot him back to the point at which we had 
broken off. 

The last day I passed with him was a Sabbath — 
a Sabbath indeed — for I never in all my life spent a 
more profitable day. In the forenoon, I sat with him 
in his seat in the University Church at Heidel- 
berg, where we had the privilege of listening to a 
powerful Gospel sermon from Dr. Schenkel. I spent 
the afternoon in his house, where he read to us in 
German, or in English translations, out of the fine old 
devotional works of his country, interspersing remarks 
of his own, evidently springing from the depths of his 
heart, and breathing towards heaven — to which, I firmly 
believe, he has now been carried. 



2 A 



13 / 1^7302 



ERRATA, 



Page 16, line 14, for was^ read 



122, lines 23, 24, delete or mental. 

129, line 12, delete the in in fits in. 

189, line 3, for derivations, read derivatives. 

,, line 4, for ?T«^a^£;y&^y<r/^(W, read ^ra^^^Siy^ar/l&f. 

,, line 7, for 5raga§hv&)oj, read ^ra^a^/^^a. 
258, line 4, for «s, read in. 

292, line 1 from foot, for Tahrlucher^ read Jahrbiicher^ 
314, line 13, for (j/f^^s^, read test. 
322, line 17, for themj read «V. 



